Clegg, our Surgeon, was leaning over the verandah, so I stopped and had him taken in there. 'Look after him, will you?' I called out to Clegg; 'his leg's badly broken,' and on we went again.
The regulars, in their hated uniforms, were a bit of a puzzle to the crowd, but they thought they had deserted to the insurgents, and soon swarmed round them, shouting, 'Viva los cazedores!' tearing off their own green and black rosettes and pinning them on the soldiers' sleeves. Many of them had already got rid of their green and yellow badges, and you may bet your life they didn't object to the black and green ones, so long as their skins were safe.
Ever since I had been stabbed by that wretched little ex-policeman, and whenever I got in among a crowd of natives, I found myself looking round to see if I could recognise him. I was doing so now without knowing it, looking from face to face all round me. Perhaps it was because of what Navarro had said, 'He will never cease revenge,' but I had the most extraordinary feeling that he was there, somewhere, and had his cunning little eyes fixed on me. I couldn't see him anywhere, and thought the strange fancy was probably due to my being so sleepy. I pulled myself together, because we were now abreast the cathedral, the front of which had been hung with black and green flags, and, on the steps, the whole of the Provisional Government was waiting for me, bowing and taking off their top-hats. It was all I could do to keep from laughing, although I was so tired and sleepy and hungry that I could hardly sit in my saddle. They made me dismount, and would have kept me there for ages, but I seized hold of Mr. Don Pedro, pushed him forward, took my hat off, bowed, and led my plucky little stallion back to the Club. I knew that he would explain everything, and I always hate being fussed over. The crowd made way for me as if I'd been a blooming emperor; but I felt a touch on my shoulder and jumped, for I was still thinking of the little brute.
'Beg parding, sir,' I heard some one say, and there was O'Leary, his funny old face simply as excited as a child's. 'We'd just like you to see that 'ere bit of 'ydraulic machinery what we brought along with us, sir.'
'Right you are,' I sang out—I know I yawned, I couldn't help it—and he took me through a side street to the water front and a long low building, which ran along the shore, with a tumble-down 'yard' in front of it. Inside the tumble-down gates there were thirty or forty of our petty officers, with their jumpers off, digging out like pepper among a crowd of half-naked natives.
'Look what we've done, sir,' O'Leary grinned, and there I saw the long chases of two 4.7's sticking up from their field carriages.
'Pretty good work that,' I said, yawning again.
'They didn't know nothink about 'em, sir, but for us, sir,' he grinned; they were all grinning with delight, and the armourer's crew, as black as paint, came across from a forge, in a shed beyond, stood by the guns, and grinned too.
'Your brother's done a good day's work, we hear, sir,' Griffiths, the boatswain's mate, said, saluting me; 'these 'ere guns'll be a pleasant sur—prise to him when he gets back.'
Then Bob and the 'Angel,' Barton, the senior mid., Blotchy Smith, half-a-dozen more mids., and Marchant, the 'Inkslinger,' with their coats off, and covered with grease and dirt, came running across.