'There, lad!' the Skipper said, chuckling and pointing his telescope at them. 'There's an illustration for you of the value of sea power. If those four miserable cruisers still flew the yellow and green flag, not one single transport could have moved.'
It really was a very striking example of how the possession of the cruisers and the 'Command of the Sea' had entirely altered the chances of the two sides.
If La Buena Presidente had been allowed to destroy those cruisers, whilst they flew the green and yellow flag, the same thing would, of course, have happened, but if, after she had been sunk, they had not revolted, Gerald would still be wandering about the forests, and the insurgents from the northern province would still be confined to their plains, and San Fernando and every town along the coast would still be liable at any moment to bombardment or capture by any expedition President Canilla chose to land there.
The transports anchored before they came within range of the guns above Los Angelos, but the men-of-war and the two torpedo-boats stood boldly inshore, and immediately came under a very heavy fire. We had to 'weigh' and steam off, so as not to interfere with it, but you can imagine that we stayed as close as we could, in order to see all that was going on.
The firing was very rapid, and very badly directed, the shells striking the water anywhere but near the ships, and what we noticed chiefly was the peculiar noise the long dynamite shells made—there were two dynamite guns in the forts, you remember—hissing through the air like enormous rockets, though they did not make much more noise when they struck the water than the ordinary shells. I and the rest of my mids. aboard the Hercules were, of course, authorities on shell-fire now, and most of them gave themselves tremendous airs, although Bob and one or two others changed colour, and got very white every time a shell burst anywhere near the ships—that wasn't often—and I knew pretty well that they were still suffering from nerves, and hadn't recovered from those fifteen minutes which wrecked the Hector.
The cruisers never took the trouble to reply; they knew the weak spot in the defences of Los Angelos; steamed right inshore, where the big guns in the forts, high up above their decks, couldn't touch them, and began blowing the sand-bags about in fine style.
The torpedo-boats darted in along the wharves and inside the breakwater, firing their machine guns, at point-blank range, into the crowds of troops there, and the amount of ammunition expended was enormous.
A good many rifle-bullets and a few shells from field-guns came our way, but no one was touched.
Late in the afternoon, when the firing was slacking down, one of the torpedo-boats came buzzing along quite close to us. She was on her way to the transports, and as she passed us, we saw that her funnel and some boiler-plates she'd built up on deck, round her machine gun, were pitted with bullet-marks. They looked, for all the world, like the inside of a nutmeg grater. Two bodies were lying close to the machine gun, but the rest of the crew were coiled down, resting, and not taking the least notice of them.
She went alongside one of the transports and came hurrying back. Standing just for'ard of the funnel was old Gerald, smoking his pipe. He was still in the same rig—brown boots and gaiters, white duck riding breeches, white duck Norfolk jacket, and white polo helmet—and José, with his scarlet sash, was squatting on the deck at his feet. He looked up as he went by, and nodded cheerfully as I waved to him, and he saw who I was. He was then taken alongside the flagship.