In an hour they were abreast the _Hector_, and steamed slowly past. First their flagship, the _Presidente Canilla_, then the still smaller cruiser, _San Josef_, the old-fashioned torpedo gunboat, _Salvador_, the rakish _Estremadura_, an armed steam yacht, and the _Primero de Maie_, looking like a Gosport ferry steamer. They were steaming at about seven knots, but even at that speed the _Primero de Maie_ and the _Salvador_ could not keep station. Although I had a marine guard on the quarterdeck, my fat Subaltern of Blue Marines—the Forlorn Hope—flourishing his sword, and the bugler sounding an Admiral’s salute, as the flagship crawled past, she took not the slightest notice of us, and we were all intensely amused to see the officers on her fore bridge gazing everywhere except in our direction, absolutely pretending to ignore the fact that we were there at all. When you remember that barely seven weeks ago my ship had towed the whole five of them out from behind the breakwater of Los Angelos, it was all the more funny. They fired a few shells into the town as they went past it, not more than three hundred yards from the shore, and I wondered whether my humorous friends at the Club were laughing quite so heartily. Half a mile astern of them came the two old-fashioned French torpedo-boats and the first of the transports, crowded with blackamoors, with yellow and green stripes in their hats, hooting and hissing as they passed close to us, though their officers, standing up amidships, took off their hats and bowed to make up for their men’s rudeness. I took off mine and swept it to the deck in the most approved Spanish fashion. Three more little transports lumbered by chock-a-block with troops, and the whole armada anchored at the head of the bay, about two miles beyond the town, and immediately began lowering their boats. My Sub was terribly put out. ’I’m afraid they’ve caught my brother napping this time, sir,’ he said to me. ’He must have rushed all his troops out there early this morning, and look, sir, you can see them hurrying back again. They’ll be too late.’ I proceeded to give him a little lecture on the advantages of possessing the ’Command of the Sea.’ ’A very neat illustration, my boy, right in front of your eyes. Canilla moves his troops about by sea—dumps them here and there, wherever he likes, whilst your brother, uncertain where he’s going to land ’em, runs his chaps off their legs, backwards and forwards.’ ’It’s jolly hard luck, sir,’ he answered, not relishing my short course of instruction on strategy.