’Wouldn’t old "Bellows" (the Commander) be in a rage if we splodged his best enamel paint!’ he said, and we jolly well knew that he’d roar out for Billums, curse him, and tell him he didn’t know how to boss the ’Pigstye’ (our name for the gun-room) and keep discipline. ’Try one of their caps,’ the ’Angel’ whispered, ’and see where it falls,’ so I crouched over the edge just under which several of the mids. in the control position were crowded together, watching the ships, and whanged off two of their caps, sending them whizzing down on deck. One fell right at old Bellows’s feet. I hadn’t time to scramble back before he spotted who’d done it, and roared for me to come down at once. He was going to make me take them up again when the Captain sang out that we could all go ashore, and you should have seen all those chaps swarming down the mast to get into plain clothes. Young Marchant wanted awfully badly to stick to the ’Angel’ and me when we did get on shore, and we told him he could if he didn’t talk. It was jolly kind of us, and he was awfully grateful. There weren’t any of Cousin Gerald’s troops left in the town by this time, we only saw a few frightened-looking old men and women about, and not a horse or a cart was to be had—not even a mule—for love or money, so we had to start footing it, on our flat feet, out along the sea road, towards the fighting. On our way we passed the stable where General Zorilla’s black horse—the one Billums had captured—was kept, and popped our heads in to see how he was going on. He hadn’t been sent back to Zorilla, because that foot was still too lame to do any work. But long before we got to Marina and the Casino, where Billums had fought that battle from the top of the roof, we saw the fleet coming along the coast towards us, and some of the insurgents coming back, too, as fast as they could. We guessed at once what would happen, and that the regulars would be able to land long before enough insurgents gathered to prevent them doing so. We were jolly frightened. ’I wonder what’s become of those two 4.7’s we helped put together?’ the ’Angel’ said, and we both wondered, because they were the only guns Cousin Gerald had which might be of any use in driving off the fleet. We were hurrying back to the town with Marchant and a lot more mids., when an Englishman overtook us, so we called out and asked him. He pointed to the ridge behind San Fernando and galloped on. It was awfully hot, and by the time we did get into the streets and across the square we were sweating like pigs, the leading ship was hardly a mile behind us, and though we tried to hurry along those lanes leading to the ridge, they were so crowded with women and children carrying things and looking back over their shoulders at the cruisers, that we only pushed our way along very slowly. Then a mule-cart came rattling along, the driver yelling out and driving straight through the crowd as if he were on a fire-engine.