because we had looked on the dreaded flag,
more terrible to its unresisting enemies than
the flag of Attila or Napoleon; had I not
been threatened, bandied about and insulted
at Oporto, kept in tremulous dread of not
passing my "littlego" at Lisbon, and nearly
plucked at my smalls at Cadiz? Had I not
seen the good ship "Negress's" letters slapped
about in vinegar, and passed through a
stinking smoke, which is called
"purification?" Had I not marked the insolent
caprice, purposely intended to vex and
aggravate the hated English at Gib, with which,
all of a sudden, without a minute's thought, in
some pet or blue-devilishness of the governor,
or alcaid, or post-master, a Spanish town was
put in quarantine? Spaniards do not care
for time, so how can they appreciate the
vexation of delay to industrious Englishmen.
They know the quarantine disposes healthy
men to disease. They know that a slight
attack, that on shore might yield to a dose of
medicine, and prove, perhaps, not Yellow
Fever at all, in a ship, in a state of anxiety
and depression, must necessarily prove fatal.
They know as well as I do, that a cooped-up
hulk, cranky, and reeking with bilge-water,
will be a charnel-house if the epidemic once
appears,—so that, to keep one sick man from
endangering a town, they condemn thirty or
forty, may be a hundred, innocent men, to
death. They know all this; but who can
reason with a Spaniard about a custom that
is merely good because it is old; merely
retained because some cowardly fools once
instituted it. As well drop on your knees
and entreat a springing rattle-snake not to
sting,—as well take off your hat to a starving
lion,—as well offer your watch and ten pounds'
reward to a turning shark to let you go.

An official Spaniard takes a brutal, hard,
unreasoning pleasure in enforcing an old
barbarism, all the more if it chafes and torments
the accursed heretic that holds the key of
the Mediterranean firm in his ruddy, beefy
right hand.

There is much talk about dollars; quarantine
just out against Tangiers and Tetuan,—
Beef-boat stopped, &c. The Arab, grave in his
haik and rhubarb papooshes, puts in each
new difficulty like a sword thrust. Our
arguments are run through and through. He is
going over with the Spanish mails from
Algeçiras to Ceuta, at ten to-morrow. Our
fare will be only the government fare of nine
pence. We must get letters from the Spanish
governor at Ceuta, and they will be the only
passport necessary. We agree, and shake
hands on the bargain, I and Fluker, the
Pre-Raphaelite artist. The rest of the day is to
be devoted to seeing the batteries. Our old
friend Spanker goes with us, in truth as our
Cicerone, and we mount sloping alleys from
Waterport Street.

"I do hope you like Gib," says Spanker,
with a tone of paternal concern, which is an
amusing evidence of the way self-love
appropriates all it approaches. "It need be strong,
I tell you, for what with plotting refugees,
runaway smugglers, escaped thieves, sham cigar-
makers, and hostile and threatening garrison,
it is a sad eye-sore to the Spaniards. It is a
core of heresy in a Catholic country—a gathering
point of rebellion, a free port, a place where
we offend their pride by stopping and opposing
every custom they have but that of quarantine.
I think they'd eat us without salt, if they
dared. Only yesterday, on the neutral ground,
one of their wretched officers splashed me all
over, on purpose, as he rode by; and then,
when I cut him in the face with a back-handed
blow of my whip—Scissors! what do
you think he did?"

"Don't know."

"Drew his toasting-fork."

"And you?"

"Knocked him down, of course, and left
him there, till the Spanish guard came up;
with whom I put him in arrest, for insulting
an English gentleman and officer."

"The Spaniards must like you very much,
Spanker, if that sort of thing goes on
often."

"O, they dote on us: but here we are
at Willis's Battery. How hot it is. Shouldn't
you like a sherry-cobler? I went into the
King's Head as I came to you, but there was
no one there but a pill (doctor), a porker
(commissariat) a nabitant, two salamanders
and a scorpion, so I would not have anything.
I'll wait till mess, when you are gone, old
fellow. Look out, now, at the batteries below.
There is the Snake in the Grass, and the
Devil's Tongue, and the Victoria, and the
Orange Bastion,—ugly customers, all: aren't
they, sergeant?"

The artillery-sergeant in the white jacket,
dangling a tremendous bunch of keys from
his finger, replied, "Yes," with an air of
self-conviction, "we've got a matter of a thousand
guns on this 'ere rock, when we chooses
to mount 'em."

"Why, sergeant, I thought there were more
than that?" says Spanker.

"Well, sir" (military salute), "at a shift,
we might pack on another five hundred. As
it is, we could blow any fleet, Roossian or
Proossian (they always go together), slap out
of the water. There are more works sinking
outside the old batteries. Let 'em come in a
year or two, that's all! I say, let 'em come!
They'll never take the rock, unless they drop
soldiers on us out of the clouds."

We went up gravelled and sanded paths
—twist and turn—blasted out between low
walls of rock, those scorched grooves that
looked like weevil-runs from the howitzer at
the Club Hotel door in Commercial Square;
from this high rock platform on the high
poop-lanthorn of the rock facing the Spanish
lines, I see the neutral ground dotted with
the white anthills of English tents.

On we went, the patriotic Sergeant
Tompion ceremoniously unlocking for us