I ran below to tell Navarro, and he was as puzzled as I was, shrugging his shoulders as he always did when he couldn't understand, or didn't care to tell what he thought.
I ran up on deck again, and on shore we could see the people running about in a scared kind of way, and the small guns on that ridge being manned. I only wished that our mids. could have fought them again.
The flagship was already abreast of El Casino, the three remaining ships, the two torpedo-boats and one wretched transport, following her.
As we watched and waited for the small guns to fire, the torpedo-boats suddenly increased speed and came steaming quickly towards us.
'What can be their game?' we were all thinking, when there were shouts from all over the ship, 'Look at their flags! Look at their flags! The stripes are horizontal! It's the black and green flag! It's flying on the flagship as well! Look!'
There wasn't a doubt about it. Each torpedo-boat had a huge black and green flag at her masthead, and in ten minutes we could see the colour and the horizontal stripes with the naked eye, as they dashed along close to the shore. We heard hurrahing, and saw hundreds of the little brown forest-men crowding down on the beach as they passed, jumping about on the sand, wading into the sea up to their waists towards them, and waving their rifles. The shouting and the hurrahs spread along the road till the town itself was full of voices, all the bells in the place began ringing, and hundreds of black and green flags were hoisted.
'I'm blowed if they haven't become insurgents themselves,' the Skipper muttered, dropping his eyeglass in his surprise; and there couldn't be the least doubt of it, for now we could see the crews of the torpedo-boats waving their caps to the troops on the beach, and could hear the crews of the ships cheering.
Well, that pretty nearly knocked us all 'flat aback,' and we realised at once that now Gerald, with the Santa Cruz fleet to help him, would be master at sea and could do anything he liked, join forces with the insurgents in the northern province, and attack Santa Cruz itself whenever he was ready. It was so grand and so jolly unexpected that I hardly know what I felt, only awfully thankful that the revolution would be over soon, and that Gerald wouldn't be worrying them all at home.