’You’ve got some nice friends, Bill,’ the ward-room officers chaffed him. The cable was already clanking in through the hawse-pipe as we got aboard, and in half an hour the _Hercules_ was following us out through the eastern passage, and we headed across for the mainland and Santa Cruz. It was my morning watch next morning (from four to eight), and it was a grand sight to see the sun rise behind us, flooding the calm sea with red and orange colours, whilst the little wisps of clouds which hung about the sides of the fierce-looking mountains of Santa Cruz, in front of us, kept on changing from gold to pink and from pink to orange. O’Leary was the quarter-master of the watch, and I saw the old chap looking at them. He shook his head at me, ’Better than an "oleo"—that—sir. That’s God’s own picture.’ Even the stokers who’d just come off watch and were cooling themselves, down on the fo’c’stle below us, stood watching the grand sight, and then, down at the foot of the mountains, a long white line showed up. ’That’s the breakwater at Los Angelos,’ fat little Carlton, our navigator, told me. As we forged along through the oily, glistening sea, and got closer, we could see the masts and funnels and fighting-tops of the little Navy of Santa Cruz sheltering behind it, all tinged with the sunrise; and the hundreds of windows in the lighthouse and the houses clustered at the foot of the mountains were all glowing as if they were on fire. If old Gerald had heard we were coming, it was quite likely that he’d come down from the estate and might be snoring on his back behind one of them, snoring like a good ’un and dreaming about the last football match he’d played in. Then high up the side of the dark mountains a ball of white smoke shot out, hung there in the still air for a second or two, and melted away, changing colour as it disappeared. ’That’s the sunrise gun, sir, from one of their forts, sir. Them Dagos be half an hour adrift, I’m blowed if they ain’t,’ O’Leary said. The bridge was crowding up now, for the Skipper and the Commander and a host of mids. had come along to bring the ships to anchor. ’Pretty sight that,’ the Skipper grunted, squinting through his eyeglass. ’Like pink icing on a wedding cake, sir,’ the Commander added, thinking he’d said something funny. ’Yes, sir; beautiful, sir,’ chipped in the navigator, really wondering what the Skipper was referring to, but very eager to agree with him—he would have licked his boots if he thought the Skipper would like it. ’Bring ship to an anchor,’ snapped out the Skipper, and the boat’s’n’s mates piped, ’Watch, bring ship to an anchor—duty-men to their stations—away second barges.’ The anchoring pendants were run up to our masthead—the answering pendant on board the _Hercules_ got to her masthead almost as soon—and we moved slower and slower in towards the breakwater.