'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.
He saw what I was thinking, and smiled, 'I'm licking them into shape gradually. We've only just begun.'
He took us into the cathedral, a crumbling old place with a huge crack across one side--the result of an earthquake some years ago--and the cool, musty, religious gloom inside was very comforting after the dazzle and glare of the sun outside. Two little stars of light, far away at the end of the chancel, made the gloom all the more mysterious, and then, as our eyes became more accustomed, we could make out the gaudy image of the Holy Virgin, looking down, with calm patient eyes, on the high altar and its tarnished gaudy tapestry.
At the foot of the steps, below the altar-rails, many women, shrouded in black hoods, were praying before it.
'They come here when the gunboats start firing; the cathedral is spared,' Wilson whispered, as we tiptoed out into the glare again.