’Right you are,’ I sang out—I know I yawned, I couldn’t help it—and he took me through a side street to the water front and a long low building, which ran along the shore, with a tumble-down ’yard’ in front of it. Inside the tumble-down gates there were thirty or forty of our petty officers, with their jumpers off, digging out like pepper among a crowd of half-naked natives. ’Look what we’ve done, sir,’ O’Leary grinned, and there I saw the long chases of two 4.7’s sticking up from their field carriages. ’Pretty good work that,’ I said, yawning again. ’They didn’t know nothink about ’em, sir, but for us, sir,’ he grinned; they were all grinning with delight, and the armourer’s crew, as black as paint, came across from a forge, in a shed beyond, stood by the guns, and grinned too. ’Your brother’s done a good day’s work, we hear, sir,’ Griffiths, the boatswain’s mate, said, saluting me; ’these ’ere guns’ll be a pleasant sur—prise to him when he gets back.’ Then Bob and the ’Angel,’ Barton, the senior mid., Blotchy Smith, half-a-dozen more mids., and Marchant, the ’Inkslinger,’ with their coats off, and covered with grease and dirt, came running across. ’What are you up to?’ I asked, and they dragged me to another corner of the yard, and I found they’d been ’assembling’ the pom-poms. ’We’ve just been giving the chaps a bit of drill,’ Bob squeaked. ’We’re having a glorious time. I wish we could stay on shore till the morning. We’d have everything finished by then. Won’t Cousin Gerald be pleased?’ Well, I was much too tired to stay any longer, and shoved off, all of them hurrying back to finish their job. O’Leary followed me out. ’They don’t know how they came ’ere, sir. I gave them English gents the "tip," and they were all out of their packin’-cases when I comes along, innercent like, with all these chaps. We just looks in at the gateway, and sees ’em all lying "’iggle de piggledy" like, a-lying on the ground, and, well, I says to ’em, "Mr. Wilson, our Sub, what the Commander bullies, ’as a brother fighting for these ’ere niggers, so one good turn deserves another, so ’wot oh!’" and we just ’as a quiet arternoon’s fun, and you sees what we’ve done, sir.’ ’He’ll be awfully pleased. Thank you very much indeed,’ I said, and tramped back to the Club, more dead than alive, looking from side to side all the time, in case that little brute was lurking about anywhere with his knife. I was so stiff that I could hardly move one leg in front of the other, and my back aches now when I think of it. Zorilla’s black charger was tied up to the Club railings, the groom apparently waiting for me, and I handed over both of the tired horses to one of the Englishmen who was there, stumbled up the steps, and fell back in one of those easy-chairs on the verandah, pretty well played out. Dr. Clegg came along. ’What do you think of my pal?’ I asked him.