The ’Angel’ and I went in to have a yarn with the fat little A.D.C. and hear what he thought about it. He was very excited, and said that Captain Pelayo would die sooner than surrender—he seemed to know him very well. That night the Captain had him taken down below in the ’tiller flat,’[#] so that he would be out of danger if anything _did_ happen, and his being taken down there made us all feel a bit creepy. [#] A space right aft, below the water-line, where the steering engine and emergency hand-steering mechanism are situated. Well, nothing happened all night; we simply ’mooned’ about, backwards and forwards, near the entrance, and _La Buena Presidente_ must have been hovering round, too, waiting till it was light enough to see her way into La Laguna, for, as it grew light enough, she was sighted not five miles away, steaming leisurely in towards the entrance. Although she was painted white she looked enormous. The Captain was called, and ran up on the fore bridge in a twinkling, and sent ’Blotchy’ Smith down with a wireless message to the _Hercules_. He showed it to me as he passed along the upper deck, ’_La Buena Presidente_ is eight miles off El Castellar steaming towards it. Shall prevent her entering. Come south and prevent her escaping to sea.’ ’She’ll be here in three hours and a half,’ ’Blotchy’ shouted, as he ran aft, and I felt jolly glad, but rather wished it was minutes instead of hours. Then ’General Quarters’ was sounded, and we all rushed to our stations. Mr. Bigge and I got through the back of our 9.2 turret—the for’ard starboard one just under the projecting end of the fore bridge—and when we’d reported everything ’cleared away’ and had filled our ’ready’ rack with more shells, we climbed out of the sighting-hood and squatted on top of the turret, whilst they trained it for’ard and aft as far as it would go and raised and lowered the long gun, to test the hydraulic machinery. It was a perfectly lovely morning, the sea like glass, and the _Hector’s_ bows seemed just to push the water aside, not even breaking the surface. It was so jolly clear that we could see thousands of jelly-fish—all the colours of the rainbow—floating past under our sponson. It really was grand, and we sat there and watched the big ship coming slowly towards us with the sun rising just behind her. ’That’s bad for shooting, if it comes to a fight,’ Mr. Bigge said; ’it will dazzle the "Gunlayer’s" eyes.’ ’I don’t expect it will; do you, sir?’ I asked nervously, because she was so huge, and I knew that she had so much more powerful guns than we had, that, now it came to the pinch, I was in a funk. ’Don’t know,’ he answered; ’we’ll know in ten minutes.’ The signalmen began running about the bridge above us, we heard the Chief Yeoman’s voice saying ’Hoist,’ and up went three flags and the white international code pendant. ’What’s that mean, sir?’ I asked, as the halyards were jerked to shake out the flags.