On Foreign Service; Or, The Santa Cruz Revolution

by T. T. Jeans

He'd been very peculiar ever since that awful morning when his chum, the Forlorn Hope, had been killed, and the strain of the next few days, followed by the prospect of fighting the insurgent ship again, was too much for his brain. He went raving mad, and had to be shut up in his cabin and his marine servant shut in with him, to see that he did not hurt himself. For three days and nights, although the Fleet Surgeon tried everything to make him sleep, he did not stop shouting and knocking on the cabin bulkhead, and as his cabin was in the gun-room flat we couldn't get away from his shouting, and it got on our nerves most terribly, so much so that we were all beginning to feel jumpy ourselves. On the fourth morning he was quiet, and the Fleet Surgeon hoped he would recover, but he died early in the afternoon without having ever regained intelligence.

This had a most awfully depressing effect on us all, and, in addition, Cousin Bob was giving Ginger and me a lot of worry. Several times I had been across to the Hercules to see him, and I didn't like the look of him at all. He could talk of nothing else but that awful fifteen minutes, and of his poor little chum the 'Angel,' so that I feared that his brain, too, might be affected.

'He's young,' the Fleet Surgeon said, 'he'll get over it;' and I only prayed that he was right.

Gerald, I heard, was all this time busy mounting some of La Buena President's small guns on the walls of El Castellar and on that ridge behind San Fernando, hoping to drive off the Santa Cruz fleet if it came again and brought old Zorilla with another army. Still, even if he did drive the fleet away, he had no possible chance of bringing the revolution to a successful termination till he had destroyed it, and there was not the slightest chance of his doing that.

There had been a good deal of trouble ashore since we left San Fernando, because, as soon as the insurgent troops learnt that La Buena Presidente was to be captured by us and handed over to President Canilla at Santa Cruz, and heard of the part we had played in delaying the surrender of El Castellar, they were so bitter against the English that they burnt the Club, and would have killed the Englishmen if the Provisional Government had not, with much difficulty, prevented them doing so. Now, however, that the big ship had been sunk by treachery and El Castellar had surrendered, they, in some way or another, thought that we would again help them, and were just as keen on us as ever. The Provisional Government simply loaded us with fruit and fresh food whilst we remained at San Fernando busy trying to make the poor old wrecked and gutted Hector seaworthy. No leave was given because of the trouble ashore, so that I could not go and see Gerald, and of course, with that warrant for his arrest still lying in the Skipper's knee-hole table, he could not come and see me.

We heard that General Zorilla and the fleet were preparing for another attack on San Fernando—now that La Buena Presidente no longer could prevent them—and every day we expected to hear the guns firing from El Castellar and to see the ships steaming past it.

And one afternoon they did come; they were half-way between us and the entrance before they were sighted, and we rushed on deck to see them, very glad of any excitement to make us forget our own troubles, but we couldn't understand why we hadn't heard any firing, and how it was that Gerald had allowed the ships to slip by him without making an effort to stop them. Poor old Gerald, he'd had a good many 'ups' and 'downs,' but now it seemed to be all 'downs.'

I ran below to tell Navarro, and he was as puzzled as I was, shrugging his shoulders as he always did when he couldn't understand, or didn't care to tell what he thought.

I ran up on deck again, and on shore we could see the people running about in a scared kind of way, and the small guns on that ridge being manned. I only wished that our mids. could have fought them again.

The flagship was already abreast of El Casino, the three remaining ships, the two torpedo-boats and one wretched transport, following her.