Mr. Montague, too, looked down and sang out to the fore bridge for some of the signal halyards to be hauled aside as they were fouling the range finder, and I could just see the feet of Pearson, the Assistant Paymaster, who was sitting, straddle-legs, on the top of it, doing ’spotting officer’—to spot whether shots fell short or over. I was jolly glad that I wasn’t up there, and that, if it did come to a fight, I had six inches of armour to get behind. The ship was so close now that we could see her huge guns, but she didn’t seem to have cleared for action. ’Fire a port twelve-pounder!’ we heard the Captain say; ’they may not have seen the signal.’ Men began running about, the Commander bellowed at them, and the little gun fired almost immediately—to leeward—away from _La Buena Presidente_—and we watched to see if that would have any effect. It had. A long string of flags went jerking up the tripod mast and the international code pendant was hoisted to her yard-arm. We heard the Chief Yeoman scurrying into the chart-house to find the signal-book, and in a minute the Captain called out to the Commander, ’They refuse to stop. Keep my signal flying and fire the foremost 9.2 across her bows.’ Billums was in charge of that turret. All this time the ’Angel’ had been singing out the range. It had got down to 7250 yards, and we were turning a little in towards the entrance, to prevent the ship closing too rapidly. Then round slewed Billums’s long gun over the starboard bow, pointing up in the air. The Captain sang down to him to fire as soon as he liked, and almost before he’d said it, off went the gun with a roar—back it flew—my cap went flying overboard, and the brown cordite smoke came stinging into my eyes. ’Why the dickens don’t you stick your cap on properly?’ Mr. Bigge snarled. ’You aren’t a blooming infant,’ and we watched to see where the shell would fall. It seemed an awfully long time, and then there was a shout of ’There it is!’ all along the ship, and up spouted the water a couple of cables ahead of the white ship. Mr. Montague shouted down to know what range Billums actually had on his sights, so as to see whether the range finder was working properly or not, and then there was another shout of ’She’s turning!’ and I was never so relieved in my life as to see her put her helm over and run away. The Captain roared for the Engineer Commander, and sang out, ’Tell the _Hercules_ she’s steaming seaward.’ The morning seemed to be quite lovely again, and we headed after her, smoke pouring out of all our funnels, and that leaky steam joint hissing more and more. Our bows began to break the water now, and the jelly-fish streamed past like a flash. _La Buena Presidente_ was covered with smoke too, and seemed to be in a jolly hurry to escape. ’She isn’t going to fight after all,’ I laughed, feeling awfully pleased. ’Don’t know—they’re getting down her rails and awnings,’ Mr. Bigge said, looking through his glass.