He took us into the cathedral, a crumbling old place with a huge crack across one side—the result of an earthquake some years ago—and the cool, musty, religious gloom inside was very comforting after the dazzle and glare of the sun outside. Two little stars of light, far away at the end of the chancel, made the gloom all the more mysterious, and then, as our eyes became more accustomed, we could make out the gaudy image of the Holy Virgin, looking down, with calm patient eyes, on the high altar and its tarnished gaudy tapestry.
At the foot of the steps, below the altar-rails, many women, shrouded in black hoods, were praying before it.
'They come here when the gunboats start firing; the cathedral is spared,' Wilson whispered, as we tiptoed out into the glare again.
'Where do the men go?' I asked.
'They carry on with their work,' he answered; and that came with rather a 'thump' after seeing the men. Perhaps they were better chaps than they looked.
'Not one shell in twenty bursts,' he said, as an afterthought.
Then he took us across the square to the English Club, the only clean, cool-looking building there, with a shady creeper-covered verandah all round it, and long easy wicker-chairs simply inviting rest.
'I shan't get you away from here, doctor, I fancy,' I said to the Fleet Surgeon, who was already streaming with perspiration, and I didn't. He went to sleep the whole of the afternoon in one of those chairs. We always chaffed him about the book he said he was writing: 'Clubs I have slept in.'
In the reading-room all the dear old English papers and periodicals, ten weeks old, were neatly laid on a table, and about a dozen thin, lantern-jawed Englishmen had come to welcome us. De Costa, looking nervous and uncomfortable, was there too, with his secretary (he'd changed his boots). We all had a green bitters, and I was given the longest cigar, and the best I'd smoked for many a day.
I wanted to do as Watson had already done—stretch myself on one of those long chairs on the cool verandah, with my feet up, and stay there till it was time to go aboard—but I was much too afraid of Wilson, and drove away again. 'I'll take it out of my Sub if his brother bullies me too much,' I chuckled to myself as we bounced along into the country to see what preparations were being made to defend San Fernando against the army which fierce old General Zorilla was leading to attack it. Luckily the carriage had an awning, but it was horribly hot all the same.