This pillar was one of the most sacred things in the Republic, and there was a white flag flying close to it, so that the gunboats could give it a wide berth when they shelled the rest of the town. There were traces of shell-fire everywhere, but it was astonishing to see how little actual damage had been done. ’Five men and a little girl killed, and they’ve fired over six hundred shell into the town during the last fortnight,’ Wilson told me. There was one two-storey house close by with at least twenty holes in the side facing the harbour, and yet it seemed little the worse—rather improved, from my point of view, because the holes increased the ventilation. The place was swarming with people, practically all were men, and nine out of ten of them had rifles slung round their necks—a ragged unkempt-looking lot of scaramouches they were, you couldn’t call them soldiers. Most of them had no equipment at all—a cotton bag to hold cartridges slung with string over their shoulders, a loose white shirt, and a ragged pair of cotton drawers, legs and feet bare, and very often nothing on their heads at all, or, if they had, a rough-plaited, wide-brimmed grass hat. Their attempts to salute, as Wilson and we drove along, were praise-worthy but ludicrous. There were shrill cries of ’_Viva los Inglesas!_’ and they would have followed us if Wilson had not stopped them, but they were eminently respectful, and the slightest word he spoke seemed law to them. ’You’re a bit of a nob here,’ I said. I wanted to say ’my boy,’ but I’m hanged if I could. He was two or three sizes too big for me, was Gerald Wilson. I’m a pretty big boss on board my ship, but I’m hanged if I was in it compared with him on shore. I’ve cultivated the ’for goodness’ sake, get out of my way; don’t you see it’s me’ air pretty successfully, but he’d got it to perfection, apparently without knowing it, and when he stopped the carriage, and we got out, he strode along with the chin-strap of his polo helmet over his grand square jaw—simply a blooming emperor. He was taking us to the cathedral, on one side of the usual Plaza you find in all Spanish types of towns, and as we passed the ’Cuartel de Infanteria,’ two or three hundred so-called troops were hurriedly forming in front of it. The trumpeter was the only chap in anything approaching a uniform. ’Kicked out of the regulars for blowing so badly,’ Wilson said; and I didn’t doubt his word when I heard him try to sound some kind of a salute. ’My dear chap!’ Thank goodness, I stopped myself in time and didn’t say that, but wanted to ask him if he thought it possible to knock the troops I had seen in Santa Cruz with these he had here. There was something in his face, ’a keep off the grass’ look, that made me, me a Post-Captain commanding one of the finest armoured cruisers in the Royal Navy, take soundings jolly carefully before I spoke to him.