My old boots were knocking up against each other and against my back, but I jammed Gerald's polo hat firmly on and slid and scrambled, and ran and slid again. The field-guns fired once or twice, there was an appalling triumphant shrieking noise behind me—you couldn't call it a cheer, it was much too savage for that—and Gerald was right. Zorilla's infantry could not stand the torrent of brown forest-men dashing down the mountain-side on top of them, and, just as I was wishing that I had a stick or a stone—anything, in fact—in my hand, they fired a volley and began running and racing back to the town and behind the walls of San Sebastian.
The mule-drivers unhitched the mules from the guns and galloped madly along after them—helter-skelter—dodging behind the walls, and then streaming along the road towards the city itself.
We were after them like smoke, and just as some of them dashed across the drawbridge and tried to close the heavy iron doors, we rushed in.
They didn't show fight, I should think they didn't; it was only the backs of them we saw as they tumbled over themselves to escape, throwing away their rifles and clambering through the embrasures of those saluting guns.
Well, that was how I paid my second visit to San Sebastian—a bit of a change from my first visit, wasn't it?
I dashed out again to help Gerald and, as I turned round the walls, along he came and old Zorilla with him. The poor old chap was mopping some blood off his forehead, and though he did look so forlorn he bowed to me in quite a friendly way. I gave his hand a jolly good hard grip.
It turned out that only a very few of his men round those guns had made any stand, and that Gerald had simply swept through them, driven them back under the walls of the fort, and the old man had surrendered. The little brown men were rushing like a pack of hounds after the retreating regulars, and Gerald's officers were trying to stop them. They did manage to bring some back, but couldn't stop the rest, who went careering along towards Santa Cruz, till fifty or sixty regulars, braver than the others, or perhaps unable to run any farther, faced round, formed up across the road, and began firing at them, when back they came grinning and smiling like spaniels who have been ranging too far ahead and know they deserve a hiding. A lot of them scrambled up the mountain-side to fetch their beloved boots, which they had dropped before they began charging down.
'The revolution is finished,' Gerald said quite quietly, and began loading his pipe; but his fingers shook a little, and I knew that he was fearfully excited, although he did his best to conceal the fact. He had the field-guns brought into the fort, and stuck them through some vacant embrasures, where they could command the road leading down to the city. Then he began to get his chaps into some kind of order again.
'Would you like to hoist the flag, Billums? You can if you like,' he said; and you bet I would. Some one—the 'Gnome' it was—brought along a roll of black and green bunting; we climbed up to the flagstaff on top of the walls, and hitching it to the halyards I hauled it up, hand over hand. You should have seen Gerald's chaps yelling and dancing about, and heard them shouting, 'Viva de Costa!' 'Viva los Horizontals!' and 'Viva Don Geraldio!' I need hardly tell you which were the loudest shouts, but old Gerald never moved a muscle, and took them all as a matter of course.
I stood on top of the wall and smiled down on them, and never had had a jollier spree. It was quite light now—a most beautiful calm morning, the air crisp and fresh—and the top edge of the ridge we'd just climbed down was a rosy red.