pallisaded gates, and huge masses of padlocks
that dumped up the Lazarus-tomb and cave-like
mouths of subterranean passages
the works of Boyd and Jones, Heathfield,
and Don, or some of those brave men
who have, here, for our England's sake, borne
the burden and heat of the clay on this burning
and impregnable rock. On, past small open
plots of ground outside the cellars, mines, or
small Thames Tunnels, where on curious
revolving frames, and with strange dial-face
scales, and levels for elevation and depression,
are the—I don't know how many pounders
watching, in that blind and owlish way, the
strip of sand below, and the green sea-purple,
with drifts and bars of shadow, with their
cyclop black eyes, after the manner of sentinel
cannon in general.

This, the sergeant, assuming a Ciceronian
or oratorical air, informs me (Spanker looking
on as if he knew all about it, which he
doesn't, and billiard belling on a wall with his
stick), was called Willis's Battery, from a
deserter that, during the great siege, went over
to the enemy, and, of course, from his
professional knowledge, being an artilleryman,
he was sorry to say, knowing all angles and
curves of fire, and all paths of shot and shell
from and to the wide loop-holes, gun-ports,
anl terraces, raked and swept this quiet
spot on which I then stood. He sent in a shot
marked with his name, to let us know his
revenge. The men could hardly be kept loading
and sponging at the guns; and what was
worse, added Tompion, digging his heel into
the gravel, and clapping the biggest gun
affectionately, "the murdering villain was
never captured." N.B. It is a curious fact,
that non-commissioned officers, like lady's
maids, like long words; a plain private gunner
would have said "caught," but Sergeant
Tompion preferred the more dignified word
"captured." Fluker. lost in rapture at the glitter
of the great sea below, studded with flocks of
ships, stops here to make a note on his
thumbnail, as Hogarth used to, of the green veins
in the inshore sea, which he foolishly compares
in colour to veins of malachite. Spanker, not
understanding the pictorial line of conversation,
stops him by asking me, what I would
bet he would not come in first at the next
Gib Races,—a broad bet I refuse to take,
though Crinoline is, I dare say, a very excellent
horse, and three-quarters blood.

I cannot help, novice in the art of war that
I am, trying to realise the old Drinkwater
days, when fire must have rained, and
blazed, and burst upon this spot of English
ground (where the heath flower now blooms
purple) on which I stand, looking towards
Spain. What filing of bayonets there must
have been, what quick signal beats of the
drum, rolling along in scurrying echoes;
what mournful processions of torn and bleeding
men, carried down to their graves outside
the gate; what a hurry of shirt-sleeved,
bare-armed, powder-black men, with dirty lips
and bloody hands, through these long
galleries, and across these battery terraces? It
is almost ludicrous to look at these traversing
carriages, and all the latest pedant
foppery from Woolwich, in a time of peace.
It must make one of those small invisible
devils who frequent Gib brandy shops, to fan
brawls, and urge to desertions, murders, and
suicides, to take a cool walk up here and see
the elaborate preparation by earth-worms
of these fire tubes, to crush and smite
other small creatures of the same species,
who bear it, and think themselves heroes
because they get twelve pence a-day and
some garlic soup for that same Christian
endurance.

Here Tompion stops me, just as I am
plunging into another sloping tunnel, to show
me across the Neutral Ground and Campo,
the jagged brown rock that is called Queen
Isabella's Chair, merely because it is scooped
out like a saddle. Then we look out
towards Europa Point, where the lighthouse
is like a white candle with a red wick,
and nearer to Jumper's and Ragged Staff
Battery. Gibraltar, the paradise of smugglers
monkeys, and partridges, lies before us, and
now a cooler, fresher air, as it direct from
blessed England, makes every brown cheek
redder and cheerier; our steps grow firmer,
faster, and longer. We feel the home air, and
are ourselves again.

Spanker is just beginning a long and not
very clearly worked-out story (it requires a
ground-plan to follow him), about how once,
when he was on furlough from the West
Indies, his vessel was waterlogged, and the
regiment was taken on board a Rio Janeiro
schooner, which had to put back to Madeira
for quarantine, because a drummer-boy on
board had died of fatigue at the pumps and
consumption.

Tompion wants me to look well about, as
this is generally considered a remarkably
pretty spot, and has been taken in a
"pottengraff." Spanker stops, and wants
irrelevantly to know, if I'll go to the theatre
tonight.

Tompion puts on an air of increased solemnity,
which signifies that we have now got to
something beyond the preface, something
worth seeing. He flings open a gate, and we
enter a new tunnel, something like the lower
deck of a man-of-war, with embrasures cut
like portholes at regular intervals.

They are each so many little alcoved rooms,
with a gun-port cut out through the rock to
command the lines, which appear small and
burnt up below you. Tompion thinks it
here necessary to become supremely
professional. Spanker whispers "Devilish clever
fellows all the artillery." Tompion squints
along the gun as if it were a fowling-piece,
and he was at the Red House going to kill a
thousand pie fulls of pigeons for a thousand
half-crowns. He rubs off an imaginary rust
spot on the breech with a handful of tow (which