As we got close to the wharf it was more exciting still, because the people crowding there and the soldiers began shouting and jeering at us, shaking sticks and throwing stones—not to hit us, but to splash us. They weren't brave enough to do any more, because they could see all the starboard twelve-pounders on board the Hector trained on them. I felt jolly important, and when Blotchy Smith—the midshipman of the first barge and a pal of mine—sang out for me to 'lay on my oars,' we bobbed up and down only about ten yards away and pretended we didn't see them.
We waited and waited; eight bells struck aboard the Hector, there wasn't a sign of any one coming, and the black ruffians on the wharf became more irritating than ever. Several lumps of mud and dirt had been thrown into the boats, and one had struck my clean helmet, but I still pretended not to notice anything. It got so bad soon that Blotchy Smith sang out to me to train my Maxim on the crowd, and you would have laughed if you'd seen the brutes clearing away.
Then the Hector signalled across that carriages could be seen coming down the road from Santa Cruz, and after another long wait we heard the mob ashore groaning and hooting, and a lot of cavalry and several carriages came clattering and rattling along the wooden wharves.
You can guess how we wondered whether it was Billums coming or only the Ministers. It wasn't Billums, for we saw all the foreign Ministers, and knew that they would not have come with him.
Some soldiers made a way for them, and then we had to pull backwards and forwards, taking them and a lot of Europeans—Mr. Macdonald among them—off to the ship, and afterwards go back for their luggage.
'Well, we'll have a bit of a "dust up" after this, sir,' my coxswain said, and that was about the only comfort.
The Angel told me afterwards that when the Ministers got on board their wives came up and made asses of them, they were so jolly pleased to see them, but they'd all been sent below by the time my boat had been hoisted in. Then we had to collar the cruisers.
Well, even that was disappointing, because they never made any resistance, the officers simply shrugged their shoulders when we hauled their colours down and hoisted our own white ensigns, and ordered their men to pull ashore. You couldn't really blame them, because our 9.2 shells would have blown them to smithereens; but, for all that, it was very tame.
By half-past one we'd got hawsers aboard their flagship, the Presidente Canilla, and by three o'clock hawsers had been passed from her to the others, and we simply went astern, hauling on our kedge anchor till we were clear of the breakwater, and then steamed astern with the whole of the Santa Cruz Navy coming along after us like a lot of toy ships on the end of a string. It looked perfectly silly, and the last one—a gunboat as big as a decent Gosport ferry-boat—fouled the end of the breakwater till our chaps aboard of her shoved her off, and along she came after the rest of them. By five o'clock we and the Hercules had anchored, and all the prizes as well.
It was a jolly tame ending to all the excitement, and we all wondered what we should do next to make them give up Billums. The A.P. said that we should probably land and take possession of the Custom House.