'I've done my best for you both,' I said, as Ginger and Bob watched me 'change,' 'but it can't be done—very sorry—the Captain says you're a valuable officer—meaning that I'm not—and that Bob is too young.'
I filled my baccy pouch, shoved the mater's last letter into my pocket to show Gerald, and went ashore, feeling as happy as a bird and jolly important.
How the chaps did envy me!
José was waiting for me on the wharf, smiling all over his honest ugly face, and took me along with him, though it was pretty awkward 'going' because of the sand-bags scattered everywhere. The shops and warehouses along the front were simply riddled with bullets and shell marks, and some men, with a mule-cart, were searching round for bodies and dumping them into it.
We tramped along—it was so hot that the place was like an oven—and found Gerald inside an office kind of place with the black and green flag flying over it, and I knew he was happy by the way he puffed his pipe. There were a great number of officers there, many of whom I had seen before at San Fernando, and they bowed and smiled in the most friendly way; I almost felt one of them.
'Hullo, Billums! Just in time! Go inside and get some grub—you'll get no more till to-morrow,' Gerald sang out, looking up from some papers.
'Your next meal will be in Santa Cruz—with luck,' he said, coming in when I'd got through a 'fid' of tinned meat.
'Not in San Sebastian, I hope!' I answered, stuffing down the last bit.
'Don't be an ass!'
'You're not making much headway along the road, are you?' I asked presently.