It was mail day too; I had to write home, and it was jolly difficult not to tell the mater what I’d heard about Gerald. I couldn’t tell her about the little brute either—only about my having done so badly at football. It was lucky I didn’t say anything about Gerald, because three days later—Dr. Clegg still kept me in my bunk—one of our boats brought off another note to me. ’One of those nigger kind of chaps gave it me, sir,’ the coxswain of the boat said. ’Didn’t seem to talk English—nothing but your name, sir. He cleared out directly he’d got rid of it.’ I thought of Gerald’s messenger and thought it must be from Gerald, though it wasn’t in his handwriting. It was from Gerald, for all that, and I soon knew why the handwriting was so funny, for he wrote: ’We’ve had a bit of a scrap—got a bit of a shell in my right arm. Learning to write with my left—don’t tell the mater. We got a bit of a hiding—my fault—I’m all serene barring the arm. You’ll hear news, important news soon.—GERALD.’ Well, he wasn’t a prisoner, which was the great thing, and I felt jolly cheerful again. ’Wouldn’t it be ripping if we could get some leave and go over there and chip in?’ Bob and the Angel said, their mouths and eyes wide open. Of course that was what we all wanted to do, and wondered all this time why the English Government allowed the President to go on stopping our trade. It was jolly galling to all of us to see the fleet of local British steamers lying in Princes’ Town harbour doing nothing, simply because the President up at Santa Cruz wanted to punish the insurgents. The English merchants were grumbling furiously, and wanting to know what use the _Hector_ and _Hercules_ were if they weren’t to be used to protect their trade. Everybody was saying that it was a thousand pities that more people hadn’t followed Gerald’s example and gone in for the revolution ’bald headed.’ In fact, Gerald had become a popular hero, and you can imagine how proud it made me. But then I got rather a nasty jar. The Captain sent for me, and I found him in his cabin with a lot of papers in front of him. He tut, tutted and hummed and hawed a good deal, and then burst out with: ’Look here, Wilson, you’d better give that brother of yours the tip to keep clear of Princes’ Town or an English man-of-war. I’ve got orders to arrest him if I can get my hands on him. Look at this!’ and he showed me a big document beginning, ’Whereas it has been represented to us by our Minister resident in Santa Cruz in the Republic of Santa Cruz that a person, Gerald Wilson—known as Don Geraldio—being a British Subject, has taken up arms against the Government of Santa Cruz Republic, that Government being at present on terms of friendship with his Britannic Majesty’s Government, all law-abiding subjects of his Britannic Majesty are hereby warned, on pain of being indicted for felony, to abstain from affording any assistance to the aforesaid Gerald Wilson.’