The navigator reported, ’On our bearings, sir;’ the Skipper nodded to the Commander, who bellowed down to the fo’c’stle, ’Let go;’ the signalman hauled down the pendants; the starboard anchor splashed into the sea, and the cable began rattling out through the hawse-pipes. Down went the pendant aboard the _Hercules_, and her anchor splashed behind us. ’Full speed astern both,’ snapped the Skipper to the man at the engine-room telegraph and the water churned up under our stern. ’Going astern, sir,’ sang out the leadsman, with an eye on the water. ’Stop engines,’ the Skipper snapped again, and the old _Hector_ was once more at anchor. At eight o’clock we saluted the Santa Cruz flag; the fort, up in the clouds, which had fired the sunrise gun, returned it after a while, and the swarthy little port doctor came out from behind the breakwater, in a fussy little steam-launch, to see if we had any infectious diseases on board, and as we hadn’t, to give us ’pratigue’—take us out of quarantine. After a lot of silly rot, he bowed and scraped himself on board, said ’bueno, bueno,’ about a hundred times, bowed and scraped himself down the ladder into his boat, and went fussing back behind the breakwater again. He’d brought some letters from our Minister at Santa Cruz, and it turned out that it was the President’s wife who had died. She was to be buried next day, so we were a trifle early. ’We might have finished that "footer" match after all,’ I heard the Angel grumble to Cousin Bob. I rather hoped that Gerald would have written, but he hadn’t—he was a terrible hand at writing letters. The Skipper—Old Tin Eye—went ashore to call on the Military Governor, who returned his call almost before he could get back. He was a long, lean, hollow-cheeked Spanish kind of a chap, in a white uniform and marvellous hat with green and yellow plumes, his chest covered with medals and orders—a grand-looking old fighting-cock. He brought with him his two A.D.C.’s—one of them as black as your hat, and the other fat and short, with an enormous curved sabre ten sizes too big for him and gilt spurs so long that he could hardly get down the ladders, even by walking sideways. He looked just like a pantomime soldier. He brought his black pal down to the gun-room to leave the Governor’s cards, and, as he could speak a little English, we got on all right. I noticed him looking at me rather curiously, and at last he said, ’You know Señor Geraldio Wilson?’ ’Old Gerald! he’s my brother. Why?’ I asked. ’You have the same,’ and he pointed to his face and hair. Old Gerald has the same yellowish hair and grey eyes that I have. Funny that he’d spotted me, wasn’t it, for we never thought each other much alike? ’You know Gerald?’ I asked him. ’All peoples know Señor Geraldio,’ he replied, very courteously, but with an expression on his face as if he wasn’t going to say any more.