Then came news, from Santa Cruz, that there’d been a great battle fifty miles or so to the north’ard of San Fernando, and that de Costa’s insurgent troops had been defeated with great slaughter. There was a rumour going through the Club that Gerald had been killed, but I couldn’t find how it had started. ’Don’t you worry. All my eye!’ my chum ’in the know’ said; ’de Costa isn’t such a fool as to try a pitched battle yet. Wait for another six months. The President is only trying to bluff the people who are finding the money to keep his end up.’ Then he told me something more about that big armoured cruiser _La Buena Presidente_. He had an idea that de Costa’s people were trying to get hold of her. ’If they do,’ he said, ’she can simply wipe the floor with all Canilla’s rotten old tubs, and his game will be finished in a couple of months.’ I couldn’t help worrying about Gerald and the mater—when she heard the news—for she thought he was still tapping his rubber trees. It may have been because of that, but I played abominably against the Prince Rupert’s Island team that afternoon. It was fearfully hot, the sweat seemed to make my eyes all hazy; my fingers were all thumbs, I fumbled my passes, and if I did gather them properly, could think of nothing except to get rid of the ball quickly, without passing forward. I was playing centre three-quarters, so messed up the whole of our attack and we lost badly. The Angel at ’half kept looking at me with a puzzled face, wondering what was wrong, and all our chaps were shouting themselves hoarse, ’Buck up, Wilson,’ but nothing would go right, and directly after the match I trudged down to the Governor’s steps by myself, to smoke a pipe and wait for our boat. You know what it feels like to have lost the game for your side; so I wanted to be alone, slung my heavy sweater over my back, with the arms tied round my neck, put on my coat over it, and sat down where old Ginger and I had sat that time before. I smoked and watched a crowd of niggers hustling round me unloading a lighter which had come ashore from one of Pickford and Black’s steamers lying off in the harbour—she had come in from Los Angelos that morning—and had just taken off my straw hat to light another match inside it, when I heard a naked footstep behind me, a fierce kind of a grunting hiss, and something struck my shoulder. I was on my feet and had turned in a second, and there was that little brute who had been shadowing Gerald, and had nabbed me up at Santa Cruz. He had a long knife in his hand, and I knew him at once, although he was dressed as a coolie, by the scar on his forehead—the one my pipe had made.