The soldiers began clearing the square now, crowds of people passing along under our windows, Bob and his chum spotted some of our mids., and yelled to them and to the four _Hercules_ mids. who came by too, but the noise was so great, and they were so busy shoving and pushing in the hot crowd, that they didn't hear them.
Presently Captain Grattan--Old Tin Eye--squinting through his eyeglass and smiling at the crowd, Captain Roger Hill, sitting bolt upright and looking bored, Perkins, and the Fleet Surgeon drove past in a carriage. They were all in uniform, and the soldiers made a way for them through the people.
'There's not going to be any firing after all,' the Angel said sadly. 'Look how peaceably all the people are clearing out.'
'Well, come along,' I sang out, 'we'll go along to the Club,' so we picked up our hats and sticks, opened the door, and ran 'slick' into the arms of that ugly little chap I'd seen outside the Club--the one Gerald said had been shadowing him.
He had half-a-dozen sturdy nigger soldiers behind him, and he held up a blue paper in front of me, grinning cunningly--hateful little beast.
I couldn't read the lingo, but there was Señor Gerald Wilson written among the print, and a scrawling 'José Canilla' at the bottom, so I guessed at once that this was a warrant for Gerald's arrest, and that he must have given the little beast the slip. The nigger chaps began closing round me, and had the cheek to try and seize hold of my wrists.
Well, I'm pretty strong, and I'm pretty bad-tempered too, and this was too much for me. I'd torn the warrant to bits, punched Gerald's friend good and hard in the face, and laid out the first two chaps who'd touched me--banged their heads against the woodwork of the narrow passage, before I'd thought of it--but then the others drew their revolvers, and that wasn't playing the game. I yelled to the mids., shoved them back into the room, banged the door, and slipped two bolts in as the chaps charged it.
'Lean out and try to get some of our fellows to help us,' I sang out; 'I'll hang on to the door.' It was the first idea that came, but then it flashed through my head that the longer I kept them fooling round after me, the more chance Gerald would have of escaping--I knew now that that was what he must be doing.