’You’ll get a grand view here—it’s cool too—you’d get sunstroke outside—stay where you are—I’ll be back presently—I’ve just had some important news,’ Gerald jerked out, and left us to watch the people and the soldiers pouring into the square—’Plaza’ every one called it. These soldiers were jolly smart-looking chaps, well dressed and well set up, very different to those we had seen at Los Angelos. They all had the vertical green and yellow stripes in their white helmets, and even we could see that they were pretty rough in dealing with the people. We saw several of the ward-room fellows hunting about for a good place to see the procession, and the two Skippers drove up to the cathedral, in uniform, the soldiers making a way for their carriage, and driving the people back by prodding them in the stomach with the butt-ends of their rifles. Gerald came in again looking worried. ’Everything all right?’ I asked. He nodded, and sat down in a corner. ’The soldiers don’t treat the people very gently,’ I said, and he told me that they were all Presidential troops in the city that day, and that there was no love lost between them and the country people, who had poured into the city to pay respect to the President’s wife. ’If you look closely, you’ll see that a great many of these are wearing the badge of the de Costas—the horizontal green and black stripes.’ ’I heard to-day,’ he went on, ’that the President’s wife, just before she died, made her brother, de Costa, and her husband, José Canilla, shake hands and promise to keep the peace after she was gone.’ ’Will they?’ Bob asked, with his mouth open. He only smiled and shrugged his shoulders—quite like a Spaniard. ’They called her _La Buena Presidente_, and she was a good old lady and kept the peace, but she’s kept back progress and reform for years. There’s no such thing as freedom in the country. There will soon be a change now.’ ’They named that ship which Armstrong’s building after her, I suppose?’ I asked him, and he nodded. I tried to pump him about her, but he’d tell me nothing, except that she would be ready very soon, and was strong enough to blow the rest of the Santa Cruz Navy out of the water. I knew that well enough. I wanted to ask him if there was any chance of her new crew favouring the Vice-President’s party—as Mr. Macdonald had suggested—and a whole lot of other things, but a frightful din started in the ’Plaza.’ Bob, pointing down below, yelled for us to look, and we saw a drunken-looking countryman waving his broad-brimmed felt hat, with an enormous black and green rosette fastened to it, in the face of one of the officers with the troops. He tried to take no notice of it, but in a second or two lost his temper, seized the rosette, tore it off, threw it on the ground, and stamped it into the white dust with his patent-leather boots.