We rode slowly up the mountain to Santa Cruz, and at that sharp turning, where we had seen the yellow and green flag last flying, we stopped and for a minute watched the transports, little smoky dots on the glistening sea, a thousand feet below us, as they carried the brave little chaps to their homes.
On the fifth morning after the operation, Bob and I had to wish Gerald good-bye, and go back to the Hercules. He was going on grandly.
'You'll have a pretty big job as Commander-in-Chief when you get well,' I said jokingly, but he shook his head. 'No, Billums! I shall chuck it and try and make some money on the estate again. I'm rather bored with revolutions and fighting just at present, and want to get away from here. I'll get that little chap you call the "Gnome" to come with me, and I'll see if I can't pay off some of my debts.'
No one had told Gerald about the warrant, so it wasn't funk which made him think of leaving Santa Cruz, and you can guess how pleased I was to hear him say this, and how jolly pleased the mater would be too.
'We've had an exciting three months of it, old chap, haven't we? but I'm going to take a rest. We've done all this fighting and killing, marching and starving, and we've only turned out one bad President to put another, just as bad, in his place. The game's not worth the candle.'
At the back of my mind I really thought the same, and I only hoped that he would still stick to his determination when he did get strong again. I had to leave him there, in Zorilla's house—with the two nuns and José to look after him—and Bob and I rode, for the last time, through that square.
Dear old Zorilla had lent us horses, and he and the 'Gnome' came with us along the road past San Sebastian and beyond the spot where Bob, the 'Angel,' and I had knocked over the carriage with the Hercules' midshipmen, right along till the road began to drop down towards Los Angelos.
I shook the old man's hand—I felt that Gerald would be safe with him—and I gripped the 'Gnome's' hand too; it was all I could do, for we could not speak each other's languages, and we rode away. At the next turning we looked back and they were still there, watching us, the General on his big black horse and the 'Gnome' on a little white one—showing up against the sky. We waved our hats, they gravely waved theirs, and that was the last we saw of them. We both felt intensely miserable, and didn't say a word for quite half an hour, when Bob at last said, 'Do you know what those two remind me of?—the picture of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.'
I smiled at him. No knight of old could have been a grander chap than was old Zorilla, and I thought of what the British Minister had told me just before we left him. 'The first time in his life that old Zorilla has ever been known to disobey an order was when he tore your brother's warrant into pieces.'
Funnily enough, the one thing that always makes me feel so glad, when I now think of this three months, was that I rescued his black horse, and was the means of him getting it back again.