The next morning at daylight all three were again in the saddle, and rode to the hillock from which they had watched the enemy on the day previous. Evaristo was most unusually silent that morning, keeping near to his brother continually and wistfully watching him. Marcelino had hardly spoken to him, but frequently when beside him he had stretched out his hand caressing him, and when he had spoken his voice had a gentle tenderness in its tones which filled the boy's mind with vague apprehensions of misfortune.
In the hollow behind the hillock, close to where the negroes had had their encampment, a body of cavalry was drawn up where they could not be seen from the river. The English ships were now at anchor, their sails either furled or hanging loose in the brails, boats flitted to and fro among them or hung in clusters at the sides of some bluff-bowed transport. One large sloop yet lay some distance off, with her top sails backed and with lines of small flags fluttering in the air from the trucks of her stately masts. On the gun-brigs and on some of the transports other lines of flags ran up to the mast-heads in answer to these signals. The decks of the transports were crowded with scarlet-coated men, and as the ships rose and fell, swinging to their anchors, the beams of the rising sun glinted on polished steel. Marcelino had seen these red coats before and knew them again, they were the trained soldiery of England, and on the decks of the transports they swarmed by thousands; but what he had never seen before was an English fleet, and now his gaze was riveted upon the vast armament, so powerful yet so completely under control. As he looked upon them his face flushed and he exclaimed, heedless that any heard him:
"Ah! if we had these with us, what need we fear from Spain?"
Evaristo bent forward on his pony's neck and looked wonderingly at his brother, but Colonel Lopez, who had dismounted, stamped his foot angrily and seemed about to make some hasty reply, when from the far side of the nearest brig there darted out a long jet of grey smoke, and a few seconds afterwards the dull boom of a heavy gun cut short the words ere they had passed his lips. Down came the lines of fluttering flags from the mast-heads of the large ships outside, then three round balls of coloured bunting ran up in a string to the main truck, and as they reached that giddy height burst open and became three flags; then from one of the ports on her lower deck there leaped a bright flash, a jet of smoke, and sharp through the maze of shipping sounded the report of the gun which gave the signal for shore.
The roar of that gun echoed in the hearts of the three watchers as a knell. An infant people had struck down the flag of a mighty nation and had it trailed in the dust; in all the pomp and imposing majesty of mature strength a nation came to try conclusions once more with an infant people.
In an instant the open water between the lines of transports was filled with boats crowded with the red-coated soldiery, the crews of the nearest ships sprang into the rigging waving their hats and shouting, the soldiers responded by a ringing cheer. Then the stout oarsmen bent their backs, the oars as though moved by one hand took the water, and swiftly, in long, regular lines, the flotilla glided over the shallow water to the land.
"Look, uncle!" said Evaristo, pointing to the nearest brig.
Colonel Lopez was at that moment thinking to himself, whether by a rush of his horsemen upon the boats as they grounded he could not inflict serious injury upon the foe; what Evaristo pointed out to him gave him his answer at once. By some means, inexplicable to the colonel, the brig had been warped round on her anchor till she lay nearly stem on to the hillock; the brass tompions had been removed from the muzzles of her guns, and now her whole broadside swept the low-lying land for which the boats were making.
"Basta!" said the colonel, "we have seen them. Now let Liniers do what he can with them."
Stooping from the saddle, Marcelino put his arms round his brother's neck and embraced him.