opinion about the matter, but determined to
laugh in its sleeve at all mistakes, and say
nothing to criminate itself. The fat old lady,
good-natured of course,—fat people always
are, they cannot help it,—who has a face
that several juries, one after the other, seem
to have sat on, sips and looks wise. The little
pale simpering woman near her looks through
the decanter, which draws us all like a
magnet. Fluker studies its colour, and thinks
burnt sienna would do it. Fortywinks, the
great traveller, knits his brows ferociously
wise, determined at last to think or die in
the attempt. A few hours of such mental
exertion, carefully kept up, must produce an
idea. But what will be the consequence? It
is dreadful to think of.

Whipper and Snapper's (the young officers)
conversation is "shoppy," and not varied.
They pity those poor devils at the Windmill
Barracks. They hear the three hundredth is
going under tents. They hear Silverstar has
been scratched for the Scurry sweeps. They
are told that Flanker lost a whole year's pay
last night at hazard; and that Solomon,
whose wealth is a proverb (haw, haw), will
not down any more rhino. Jones of the fifty-
seventh has killed another horse, and Driver
is going to be cashiered. Verdi's opera last
night was "stunning"; and weeds are not
what they were.

I dare say I should have learned even more
than this, had not a scuffle of soldiers' feet
and a grounding of muskets been at this
moment heard outside. It was the commandiug
officer visiting the guard house. Whipper
slips on his belt, and is out. Snapper tosses off
his wine, and flings down a half-finished bunch
of raisins. Everyone present draws a breath,
as if a tight hand has been removed from
their gullets,—such a restraint are even two
unsocial and retractile men in a party.

I seize the occasion to propose a trip to
Africa. Everyone applauds it, but no one
but Fluker, the colourist, will go. He wants
to see the Africa of Scipio and Hannibal,
the Africa of Saint Augustin and the
Corsairs, of the Berbers, and of Carthage.
We toss our napkins on the back of our
chairs, leave the half-severed melon to the
parliament of flies, always willing to sit, and
summon the waiter.

The waiter with the immobile yellow wax
mask of a face comes, napkin pinched under
his left arm,—"Africa, sir? yes-sir;"—he
will be gone, and anon he will be with us
again. He will go to the Four Corners, the
cross-roads where the sea captains pace
and bargain. He will then look for Ben-Hafiz,
the Arab captain of the Ceuta zebec,
"The Young Man's Escape," who was
generally to be found smoking his cheroot and
quite in the clouds at the tavern called the
"Good Woman" (a woman without her head,)
in Bomb Proof Alley. He will bring us
the Padrone, or report progress. The party
now break up with a general slide and shuffle
back of chairs, and turn to the épergne; the
bustle being seized by the Major as an opportunity
to fill his glass, and attempt to throttle
the decanter.

A few of us betake ourselves to the square,
where some of us squat on the low wall, and
others have chairs and think of Bass, as
we turn our eyes inward to certain silver
tankards that, though not of Cellini
workmanship very well answer our ends. Others
of us aim the howitzers at certain shelves
and ledges of the great wall of rock that faces
our square, now rummaging a gunner's house,
now reconnoitring a grinning battery, now
hoping to see the famous apes that never are
seen. We beat all over its grey, mottled
surface, bare, storm-beat, grand; that vast
rampart wall of rock on which the fire has
rained and the lightnings burst—God's fire
and the devil's fire—and left it still steadfast
and all unchanged.

What is that moving like a hopper on a
double Gloucester, along that central terrace
where the last gun is? Can that be anything
human clinging there like a fly to a ceiling,
a wild goat to a Welsh crag, or a sea-boy
to the rigging? Yes; I can make out through
my circle of glass, two mules, one led, and
one with a person upon it—I think a lady—
coming down, I suppose, from Saint Michael's
Cave, or the Flag Staff. Small as a toy
figure she is, I declare. The old wine merchant
is praising Pemartin's sherry, telling
us the way to cook the West Indian Grouper
fish, and laughing at a friend's plan of putting
Colares into old Madeira casks, and selling
it by mistake for the same sum,—when the
waiter re-appears.

With him comes Ben-Hafiz, the Arab
Padrone of the zebec. The news is bad. We
are walled round with diseases and quarantines.
The Black Death was at Tetuan, and
the Beef-boat, on which the garrison depends
for provision, was that morning stopped.
Cholera was at Hamburgh, which
checkmated England, and all ports that way.
The Yellow Fever was at Vigo; and a
new sort of plague, with boils under the
armpits, was at Tunis. To Ceuta we could not
go but only from Algeçiras, across the Bay,
in the Spanish country. Every way, fourteen
days' quarantine stared me in the face,—
fourteen days' solitary confinement without
one solitary comfort,—fourteen days'
angling out of a port-hole, yawning,—fourteen
days' living badly at your own expense
—durance most intolerable, and not to
be borne.

Now, all the tricks of quarantine, that
relic of past barbarism, with its attendant
fear, intolerance, and disregard of personal
liberty, I had already had too much cause
to know. Had I not seen the dreadful
emblem of death, the yellow flag, flying in the
bright little green bay of Vigo? Had I not,
because arriving there half an hour after
gunfire, been, kept from landing, and merely