'Quaint little chaps, aren't they? Their whole ambition is to be proper soldiers. The first thing they want is a rifle, and the next boots. They'll wear these now till their feet are so blistered that they can't walk with or without them.'
'Surely Zorilla will have to fall back,' I said, as we drove back to the town.
He shrugged his shoulders. 'My only fear is that he will break away towards El Castellar. About sixteen miles along that road there is a forest track leading there, and he may have to fall back on it; but he'll have to leave his wagons and his guns if he does, and his reputation will be lost. He's been ordered to attack San Fernando, and the fierce old man will do so, even if he and his two "A.D.C.'s" are the only ones left.'
We rattled past the string of captured horses, and drove down to the shore where I had landed, calling at the Club, on the way, to wake the Fleet Surgeon and bring him along.
Two big lighters were aground at the bottom of the beach, and hundreds of natives were swarming round them, wading into the water, bringing ashore the packing-cases of hydraulic machinery, and making a noise like a lot of bumble-bees as they dragged them up the sloping foreshore.
Thank goodness we'd got rid of them at last, for the Commander had been like a bear with a sore head ever since those cases had lumbered up his battery.
'Why the dickens don't they get rid of their rifles when they're working?' I asked, because most of them had rifles slung over their backs.
Wilson smiled, 'That's a regulation I've made. If a man drops his rifle for any purpose whatsoever, any man without one may pick it up and becomes a soldier and a caballero—a gentleman—and has a machete man to carry his food for him on the march. That's why they won't part with them!'
That was a quaint idea if you like.
My galley was waiting alongside the little tumble-down jetty, and the Comfort pushed his way through a crowd of awestruck natives to give me a signal-paper. 'The Commander thought you'd like to see it, sir—a "wireless" from the Hercules.'