'I don't think you were,' he said, smiling. I really don't think I was.
We met hundreds of the insurgents pouring back through the town, sweating like pigs, but wild with enthusiasm at the defeat of the Government troops, shouting 'Viva los Inglesas' as they passed us on their long march back to El Castellar.
'I don't see how we helped 'em to-day,' I said to Perkins, who was hobbling along on his game leg beside me.
'Nor do I, sir, but they seem jolly pleased.'
I found de Costa and his blooming Provisional Government—they were all bows and scrapes and hand-spreading.
'I want to know how you had the confounded impertinence to fire over my ship?' was what I said to the little Secretary.
I don't know what he repeated, and for a minute there was terrible consternation among them. They all—theoretically—grovelled in the dust before me. But then they began to smile.
'His Excellency the Presidente will take you to see ze two gons,' the Secretary told me, and I think there was a twinkle in his eye.
He did take us, I, de Costa, and his Secretary driving solemnly in one carriage, Perkins and the rest of the Provisional Government crowding into another. We rattled through the lanes, along which Gerald Wilson had driven me, and stopped on top of the ridge. Here we got out, and had to tramp along it.
'You will see a sur-prise,' the Secretary bowed—I'm certain that now there was a twinkle in his eye.