They had cleaned themselves for the occasion, looking quite spruce as they surged along that road, their officers trying to make them keep some military formation—with very little success. A few were wearing those brown boots which they’d looted, but most of them were barefooted, so made very little noise on the hard ground, but, for all their lack of uniform and discipline, their eyes were flashing under their white hats and they bore themselves very bravely. After them came another mob—men only armed with _machetes_—the terrible little _machetos_, immediately in front of the six white horses and the President’s carriage. Behind it was a space of about fifty yards, where I was to go, and then came more carriages with the Provisional Government, another mob of wild _machetos_, two companies of sailors from the ships, and those two hundred regulars who’d helped me bring little Navarro and those guns into San Fernando. I didn’t know that they had come along, and was jolly glad to see them. They had been given the honour of dragging the two pom-poms through the city—those two pom-poms we had landed at San Fernando with the rest of the ’hydraulic machinery’—and seemed very proud of the privilege. To me, of course, they were the most interesting part of the procession, and I wondered what they would think if they knew that it was I who had untied their arms that morning and brought them along through the forest; but every one took it for granted that I was Gerald, so it was no use wondering or pretending to be myself. Behind them another huge column of riflemen began to defile down into the road, but by this time we had climbed down from the top of the wall, Zorilla had mounted his black horse, I had got on to mine, and we waited in the shade of the weather-beaten walls of San Sebastian, with the muzzles of their saluting guns sticking out above our heads, till the last of Gerald’s army had marched past, doing their best to look like real soldiers whether they had brown boots on or not, their eyes flashing fiercely, and their shoulders well thrown back. Thank God! they had hardly a cartridge among them. Zorilla motioned for me to ride on, so I cantered away to my place behind the President’s carriage, the ’Gnome’ close to me, and the two orderlies coming after.