you as a travelling companion. Now that I
was going to Africa, Major Macgillicuddy
would hold me by the button (that button
he had already loosened), and tell me, in a
low, bass whisper, that only ten days ago a
brig had been brought into the government
harbour, picked up by some vessel on the
Barbary coast, with the name carefully
scraped out, and the decks bloody. I had
better take care. Was my life insured?
Could he lend me a Colt's revolver, with all
the latest improvements. It was a pity such
a deuced pleasant fellow (here I blushed, of
course) should throw away his life to see a
mere Spanish garrison-town. Did I know that
it was the common talk of Gib that the
Spaniards were about to proclaim war on the
Moors, for their attack on Mellilla? He had
been, indeed, distinctly informed that chests
of dollars were arriving every day, under
convoy, at Algeçiras for war purposes. The
Emperor of Morocco, one very reliable
account said, had struck the Spanish
ambassador at Fez, and threatened him with
the bastinado; but he had escaped at night,
dressed as a date-merchant, to Timbuctoo. The
Beef-boat captain, So-and-so, told a friend of
Colonel Martingale, who told Simms of the
Hundred-and-Second, who was a bosom friend
of his (Major Macgillicuddy's), only that moring,
that not a Spaniard showed himself
on the walls at Ceuta, but he was instantly
potted by the Moorish matchlockmen. Now
I knew perfectly well the Major cared no
more for me than he did for the last pack
of cards he flung under the table, and that
if my head dangled at the saddle of a Rif
camel to-morrow night, it would not spoil
his appetite for one day. I knew, moreover,
that the Major's hearsay was mere floating
gossip, maliciously exaggerated to annoy me
(some men cannot resist the pleasure of
tasting the power of giving pain); and,
moreover, as all indolent people do, he took
delight in stopping another man's activity.
So I replied nothing, but gravely nodded,
and went off to pack up my out-at-elbows
trunk, and hurry the Arab captain.

Pushing and elbowing through a crowd of
red and green boats, with lateen sails bent
back like a hare's ears when she runs before
the hounds, I and Fluker, my artist companion,
push off from Calpe, the Pillar of Hercules,
which the jeaolus Phœnicians kept as a toll-
gate, beyond which no strangers might pass;
though they had no cannon then, to shoot at
them with, as we have now. We do not care
now whether the rock is like a couchant
sphynx, or a bucket, as the Greeks compared
it to: indifferent to us whether its name is
Hebrew, and means a caved mountain, or
Phœnician, and means the night watch-tower.
We are going to the lion country, and leave
the burnt rock for antiquarians to grub about
as long as they like. When Gib's gun-fire
sounds to-night at Ave Maria time, we shall
be far away, far away from its videttes.
Africa, a new quarter of the world, is all
before us; so let that white fever-cloud hang
about the flag-staff and Saint Michael's cave,
where the treacherous Spaniards once hid, as
long as it like. Let Colonel Martinet put
the whole garrison on bread and water,
and the Town-Major sweep the streets with
grape. We are free!

To tell the truth (why should I be
ashamed of it?) I felt, as I put my foot into
the bilge-water puddle at the bottom of the
Algeçiras ferry-boat, that slight fever of
anxiety which travellers often feel on taking a
sudden and uncertain step: a tremor such as
the bravest man may feel; and which is a
tingle of the nerves, not a chill of the heart.
It is what men carrying scaling-ladders feel,
and what the officer who volunteers to head
a forlorn hope feels. It is natural, and not
unbecoming the thoughtful brave man. It is
all very well to tell me that that young Guards-
man I just met smiling and showing his teeth
in Regent Street, with a bunch of violets at
his button-hole, would not have felt so. For
my part, I think the man who sees a danger
and yet faces it, is braver than the wild Irish-
man with the bloodshot eyes, who rams his
hot head into the blazing mouth of an eighteen-
pounder, and pays the natural consequence.
You must remember the difference, too
—when you laugh at my hesitation at a
mere five hours' sail—all the world over,
between the outdoor man and the indoor man.
My nerves have all come to the surface, with
much introspection, and the fretting of
perpetual thinking. For certain things, I would
let them cut my heart out; but you must
not wonder if I do not smoke and sing all the
time of the operation, as a sailor does whose
leg is being cut off; or if I shudder just a
trifle at the first glitter of the surgeon's
knife. When I hint the possibility of danger
to Fluker, he makes a face, and takes a look
inside a tankard of bitter ale, and says,
"He daresay he shall pull through;" and
certainly, if his mental pull will be
anything like that miraculous pull which he
took at the pale ale, I quite agree with
him. Fluker was thinking of the jewel-
colour of sea-water; of the effect of white
sails against blue skies; of red-turbaned
heads telling against white mosque walls; of
the red scarf, that carries the colour through
the picture; and I knew it was impossible to
make him realise the fact that we might be
swooped up in our flight across the Gut by a
Rit galley. So I let him alone; knowing that
nothing but a torrent of sabres pouring on
our deck would ever convince him that such
infamous, illegal, unconstitutional, un-English
conduct was possible, even in those latitudes.
Besides, Fluker was one of those unpractical,
unworldly men, who if he had wanted to
stick up on the door of his London chambers,
"Gone in the country: back in a week,'
would have stuck it up with his diamond
shirt-pin, and not thought more about that