'All right,' he muttered angrily, 'I'll not trouble to try and patch things up again.'
'I hope you jolly well won't. If your chaps want to cut across our bows, tell 'em to look out—that's all.'
'You absolutely refuse?' he said very coldly.
'Absolutely,' I answered, just as icily, holding the door curtain back.
'All right; sorry to have troubled you,' and Ginger had gone up on deck before I could think of anything more, and I knew that we'd jolly well parted 'brass rags' at last—after all the times we'd sworn that we'd never let the gun-room quarrels make any difference to us.
I wanted to rush off to the Hercules and make it 'up' on the spot, but that beastly remark about Bob being my cousin—and the other thing—simply set me tingling all over, and I'd see him in Jericho first. If he thought that every time our midshipmen had a row, mine were to go to the wall, he was jolly well mistaken.
There was bound to be a row about the damaged boats, and there was—a regular Court of Inquiry—and a lot of hard swearing on both sides, the only result of which was that Ginger and I—we'd been glaring at each other all the time—got badly snubbed for not keeping better control over our gun-rooms.
Well, all this, coming directly after the worry about Gerald, made me feel pretty bad-tempered. I wanted Ginger to yarn with more than any one, but that was 'finish,' and, as my shoulder wasn't quite all right yet, I had nothing to do but wander about the ship like a caged monkey.
Every one knew about San Fernando in two or three days, and by the time my shoulder was all right and I could go ashore—you bet I kept my eyes skinned to see that chap who'd knifed me—news began coming pretty regularly from that town, brought by small sailing-boats which managed to get through at night—and most of it was pretty bad news.
Gerald and the insurgents had certainly got possession of San Fernando, but El Castellar, the strong fort at the narrow inlet to the bay, was still in the hands of the President, and still stopped all trade. Not only that, but, worse still, the Santa Cruz gun-boats slipped up there and amused themselves by bombarding the defenceless town. The whole Insurgent army didn't possess anything even as big as a field-gun, so the gunboats could fire away in comfort as long as their ammunition lasted. We heard that the warehouses and offices along the sea-front had already been practically destroyed by shell-fire. As these nearly all belonged to English firms, whose headquarters were at Princes' Town, the whole colony was in an uproar; and, much to our joy, our Skipper was ordered—from home—to take the Hector up to San Fernando and report on the state of affairs. You can imagine how excited we all were, and how I looked forward to seeing old Gerald bossing round in his General's uniform.