Firing did not cease till dark, but none of us thought that the green and yellow flags would be flying in the morning, and we were quite right. Los Angelos itself was deserted, and white flags as big as table-cloths were hoisted above the forts up the mountain-side. The transports immediately went alongside the wharves and began to disgorge their ragged little brown troops; the cruisers and gunboats took up their old moorings behind the breakwater, and we anchored again outside it and just clear of the lighthouse. You can imagine how keen we were to go ashore and see what was happening; but Captain Roger Hill was as strict as he was prim, and refused to give any leave whatever. ’If we had your Skipper—"Old Tin Eye"—here, Billums, I bet every soul would be ashore by now,’ Ginger said; but I don’t know, he had had a bit of a fright when our mids. fought those 4.7’s, and had been much stricter ever since. We could only hang about on deck with our telescopes and watch the little insurgents pouring out of Los Angelos, and crowding along that road, up the mountain-side, towards Santa Cruz. A long way up, at a place where it curved sharply, the yellow and green flag was still flying, and we could make out trenches and could see the wheels of some field-guns half hidden among the trees. The trenches were continued up the mountain-side, and it looked, from where we were, as if a hundred brave men, behind them, could stop a thousand. Before nightfall Gerald’s people were swarming below this line of trenches, and during the middle watch desultory firing went on continuously, but in the morning the yellow and green flag still flew there, and when we could see the little white-shirted insurgents dodging in and out among the trees, they hadn’t got any nearer to the guns. Next night there was still more firing; the field-guns were booming every few minutes, their shells bursting, with a vivid glare, lower down on the mountain-side. It was most fascinating to watch, but, as Bob said, gave us a ’crick in the neck’ looking up all the time. The flags and the field-guns were still there in the morning. ’Your brother will find that a pretty awkward road to Santa Cruz,’ Captain Roger Hill said, speaking to me, off duty, for the first time since I joined the ship. I bridled up and got angry at once, for he said it in such a tone as to imply, ’What the dickens can a mere rubber-planter know about war?’ ’He’s beaten General Zorilla once, sir; I expect he’ll manage it again somehow,’ I answered, as he stalked away, smiling in his superior way. I’d jolly well like Gerald to meet him and take him down a peg. He’d sized up Captain Grattan, my own Skipper (’Old Tin Eye’), and put him in his place quick enough—good chap though he was—and he’d have an easy job with Captain Roger Hill.