’It’s done me a power of good,’ he said—’just like Ladysmith, only them Boers was always firin’ back.’ You can guess how dirty we were by this time, and we were sweating like anything—our tongues feeling as if they didn’t belong to us, and we would have given anything for a drink. One of the natives was sucking at a bottle of kola, and it looked so jolly appetising that the ’Angel’ bagged it, drank it, and then had a grand idea. He tapped the bottle—opened his mouth—pointed to all of us (we all opened our mouths)—sang out ’_mucho bueno_’—and then pointed down to the town. The officer whom we had hauled from under the gun—he was brave enough now, and stood with his feet wide apart, twirling his moustaches and scowling fiercely—understood what my chum meant, and sent all his men down to the town, whilst we went on with their job, and in twenty minutes or so, just after we’d fired the last shot, they came back with dozens of bottles of kola and trays of buns and cakes of all sorts. ’’Aving a stand easy?’ Mr. Bostock sang out, waking because the guns weren’t firing, and he chipped in, and we all had a grand feed. Wasn’t that kola bitters good, that’s all! and in the middle of it along came the Captain, the First Lieutenant, the New President and his boss men and fairly nabbed us. What made the Captain so angry was that we’d fired once or twice right across the _Hector_. It was the ’Angel’s’ fault—he was so excited. We were jolly frightened, because he glared at us from the eyeglass eye, although he couldn’t keep the other from twinkling, and he ordered us back to the ship at once and stopped our leave for ever. The New President was smiling all over; I don’t think he’d smiled very often lately—he didn’t look as if he had—and then we tramped back down the lane, giving young ’Inkslinger’ a bit of help, because his hand was awfully painful and he was as pale as a ghost. They caught us up in their carriages, and the Captain gave him a lift and took him aboard in his own galley, a very great honour. ’He introduced me to the President—he called me his Secretary,’ he told us, full of buck, when we got on board. The ’Angel’ and I rushed off to find Billums and tell him what we’d done. ’That makes up for that silly ass newspaper "business" at Princes’ Town,’ he said, and was jolly pleased. It made a lot of difference to the gun-room when he was in a good temper, and he’d been beastly ever since that forty-eight hours’ leave. The ’Angel’ and I didn’t dine with the Captain that night, because we were so junior, and only the five senior mids. and the Inkslinger were asked. We were rather glad because we always felt terrified in his cabin.