In the morning we all went back to the _Hector_, and at five minutes past ten o’clock old Billums came along in the port launch, the Governor bringing him off and making more apologies. Billums _was_ glad to get back again—he wanted a shave and a clean collar most awfully—and you can guess how jolly glad we were to have him. The Commander bellowed at him that he’d make him pay for all the paint-work which had been spoilt by clearing for action, but it was only his way—he couldn’t help it—and the _Hercules_ gun-room sent a signal, ’Sub to ditto. We are all jolly glad to get you back,’ which was nice of him, though his beasts of mids. didn’t join in with the signal—just like them. Well, the Ministers and the merchants went ashore jolly pleased with themselves, but they left all the ladies on board, as they thought it wiser for them to go to Prince Rupert’s Island with us till things had quieted down in Santa Cruz. We gave Billums a rousing good sing-song, till the Commander ordered us to chuck it, and was appallingly rude to him; and next morning we left the Santa Cruz Navy for its own people to take back behind the breakwater, and shoved off for Prince Rupert’s Island. You should have seen the Angel looking after the Minister’s two daughters! It was too asinine for words, and I told him so. He said I was jealous, and we jolly nearly came to punching each other’s heads about them. *CHAPTER V* *Gerald Wilson captures San Fernando* _Written by Sub-Lieutenant William Wilson_ Those thirty-six hours in San Sebastian are over and done with, and I shouldn’t care to go through them again. They were the longest hours I have ever spent, and they, at any rate, taught me what it does feel like to be a prisoner, and to look through an iron gateway and envy everything outside it, and everybody. The other chaps—_insurrectos_ they all were—had been jolly decent to me, although I could not understand their lingo, and the way they settled down and took things as a matter of course was simply extraordinary. Even when two more were dragged out the morning I was released, and shot against that parapet, the others only shrugged their shoulders and simply smoked cigarettes all the harder. You could only imagine that they were but half-civilized, had known no other way of carrying on the politics of the Republic, and were so used to violence and murder that, when their turn came to go ’under,’they simply bowed to the inevitable, their only consolation being that probably in another few weeks or months, if luck favoured their party, that same stuffy room would be crowded with President’s men, and quite possibly the same villainous-looking firing-party would just as cheerfully prop them up against that wall and shoot them down. These same miserable-looking convicts, whom I’d seen with chains round their ankles, would almost certainly be there to dig fresh graves.