When the noises stopped a bit, I sang out, '_Gracias! Gracias! Muchas Gracias!_'--about the only Spanish words I knew. They cheered more than ever.
'Quite effective show, that,' Gerald smiled cynically, as he went back to dress, 'you and I standing there by the side of the insurgent flag. They love anything like that.'
I hadn't really noticed the flag--I'd been much too nervous.
'That little fiend of yours tried his tricks on again last night, tried to knife me,' he said presently.
'I took away his knife and boxed his ears,' he told me, lighting his pipe with one of my last matches. 'It's a treat to get a decent match, Billums, I hate those "stinkerados"[#] we get in this confounded country.'
[#] 'Stinkerados' is a term applied to the ordinary foul-smelling Spanish sulphur matches.
'Confounded country!' I answered angrily. 'You seem to be risking a good deal for it. I wished to goodness you'd killed the beast."
'My dear Billums, I'd fight on either side so long as I could get a bit of excitement--so long as I could boss the show.'
'I wish to goodness I could chip in with you,' I told him. 'I don't even boss the gun-room--not properly, the Commander thinks.' Oh, bother the _Hector_! I remembered that my leave was up at noon. 'Bother it all, Gerald, I've got to keep the "afternoon" watch, and see that a boat doesn't shove off with the fenders over its side, and listen respectfully whilst the Commander bellows at me that a man hasn't got his chin-stay down, and that I'm an incompetent, useless fool. It's nearly ten o'clock now and I must be off.'
He got me a horse, and I left him, his worn-out little brown chaps, and his wounded, and shoved off back to San Fernando, galloping along the beach, and learnt then what an unsuccessful cavalry charge meant; for the shore was strewn with dead and dying horses, dead men, rifles, swords, lances, and, more conspicuous than anything else, the red blankets they'd thrown away in their retreat. The tide, too, had risen and was half covering some of the bodies with sand, as if it wanted to hide the horrid sight and wipe out all traces of that awful morning's work.
I was looking about me for something to take back for the mater, and had passed any number of ordinary swords, which were not worth the trouble of dismounting, but at last saw one with a very elaborate hilt and sword-knot, lying close to a body stretched face downwards in the sand, so jumped off and picked it up. The uniform on the body was that of an officer, and out of curiosity I turned the head round with my foot. Ugh! It was Zorilla's black A.D.C., the chap who had been so impressed with our after 9.2 gun that day we anchored off Los Angelos. I scrambled back into the saddle with his sword and rode on, shuddering and thinking a lot of things which I couldn't write down, without you laughing at me.