He shrugged his shoulders when I told him about not killing that little ex-policeman, and said, ’Till he die he always make revenge,’ which made me think myself more of an ass than ever for not having killed him when I had the chance. *CHAPTER XI* *San Fernando attacked from the Sea* _Written by Captain Grattan, R.N._ Much to my relief, young Wilson came off in time to keep his afternoon watch, none the worse for his extremely exciting forty-eight hours’ leave, and directly he had told me that all fighting had ceased, I sent Watson, my Fleet Surgeon, and my young Surgeon, Clegg, ashore to help patch up the wounded, giving them as many chaps as they wanted to take to help them, and writing a polite note to the New President’s Secretary informing him of the fact. I knew that every doctor would be wanted, because the fighting had been very severe and all that morning we had seen streams of wounded men dragging themselves back from Marina along the road by the sea. Already one Englishman, a man named Seymour, had been brought off to the ship, badly wounded, but he died as he was being hoisted on board, so his friends took the body ashore again. I went ashore, myself, soon afterwards, and found everybody at the Club. A cheery lot of chaps they were, in spite of their pal’s death, and when the little Secretary, who had heard that I had come ashore and followed me there, bowed himself in half and said, ’The President is much gratitude for the guns,’ they yelled with delight. ’The hydraulic machinery you brought from Princes’ Town,’ they roared. ’We couldn’t have managed without it—just came in the nick of time,’ and then bundled my little friend into the next room. They told me that the whole of General Zorilla’s artillery had been captured, and, before I went back to the ship, drove me down to have a look at it—four field-guns of French manufacture, four English field-guns, and two 4.7’s on field carriages. ’Those English guns don’t seem to have done much work,’ I suggested, screwing my eyeglass in very hard, ’do they?’ and they explained that they’d been busy polishing them up ever since they’d been brought in—that was why they looked so new. It struck me that, now the insurgents—or I suppose I should say Gerald Wilson—possessed all these guns and had knocked Zorilla so hopelessly, they had only to capture El Castellar to make themselves safe from the Santa Cruz Navy. Once they had captured it, the guns there would prevent any cruisers passing through the narrow entrance, and they could sit still and wait till that big cruiser, _La Buena Presidente_, came along and made them masters of the sea.