"There is one thing," I said to Fluker, as
a rejoicing touter bore us off to the only inn
ot the place. "We are in Africa, that alone
is a delight and a rapture."

"Keep saying Africa to me," says Fluker,
"I can't realise it. It's more like going to
Herne Bay; though I had one or two
misgivings of stomach."

"One or two! how some men—but, there,
never mind."

I said nothing; I was so proud of having
set my wandering foot in Africa.

"Lead on!" said Fluker, grandly to the
touter, who had made himself a groaning Atlas
under our portmanteaus, forgetting he did
not know English; but then Fluker, though
he has sometimes a good deal of presence of
mind, is generally so absent with his art and
his verses. There, again, only hear him, in
Africa, singing:

The whale is spouting fore and aft,
      The shark tears through the sea;
But not so fast as our ship that leaps --
      Bound straight for Barbarie.

One or two suicidally idle soldiers fishing
from the quay-wall for mackerel, were all
the garrison we saw as we followed the
intrepid touter along a pebble-paved jetty, past
some stalls and dens for officials, who all but
went on their knees when they saw our
grand passport. It was not till we left the
fortified gateways and the citadel, to the
right, and turned from the feverish, unquiet
sea, up a steep, narrow lane, that we began
to realise where we were. We were passing
up between high, quiet white-washed garden-
walls with scented bunches of purple flowers
hanging over in tropical wealth. Here and
there a pomegranate-tree hung up its fruit
out of our reach; here and there some
African tree, whose name I did not know,
tossed its blossoms on us; and just as we
were climbing still higher, Atlas stopped,
shook down his luggage mountain in the
doorway of a small dirty court, and said we
were there.

This was the Fonda.

"Well, I'm sure!" said Fluker hopelessly.

Atlas took three times the amount of pay
he ought to have had, with a grumble wiped
his forehead, shouted for the landlady, and
stumped off. To our horror the landlady
spoke nothing but Moorish; and, though a
good-natured woman enough, had no idea
of putting herself to much trouble on our
account, and seemed to have no idea of our
being a source of profit. She knew a few
Spanish words, but we did everything by
dumb show. Our treaties were like the
episode play in Hamlet, "The thing where-
with we catch the conscience of the king."
We asked for a room; she showed us up a
dark, stumbling pair of brick stairs to a little
dim bed-room, with a scorpion-nest of a roof,
and a grated window commanding a view of
the street.

As we stuck our heads out we heard a
doleful drag and clink of chains, and a file
of galley-slaves in yellow, led and followed by
soldiers with loaded guns, trailed down the
street; for Ceuta is the Botany Bay of Spain,
and here the wretches die by thousands from
climate, hard work, cruelty, and neglect.

I've asked our hostess for Beef? No.
Mutton? No. Veal? No. Fish? No. Bacon?
Yes. Eggs? Yes. Fruit? Yes. Tea? Yes.
Coffee? Yes. Very well, then; good coffee;
good and quick.

We sit down on our two iron beds, and
look at each other.

"If you call this Africa, I wish I was out of
it. I am so doosed hungry?" groans Fluker.

O the crude nakedness of that dirty, tiled
room, with the scorpion ceiling and the
truckle-beds!

Presently in came the dinner, two
tumblers of brown ditch-water coffee without
milk or sugar; black bread without butter,
and some slices of brown, old, sow-bacon,
swimming in black grease. For dessert, two
figs split open, and with a seedsman's drawer
full of gold-seeds showing. You might talk.
argue, reason; nothing more could be got
out of our landlady. No meat is to be had in
Spain after market hours; no one keeps any
in the house. What is bought is bought for
measured mouths. Butter is always scarce,
and cheese, in retired places, is altogether
unknown.

We eat in moody melancholy; and again,
just as we are going to stroll out to see the
fortifications, we are startled by a clink and
drag of chains. We look out, it is the long
string of galley-slaves marching back with
sullen decorum up the covered way of the
street. Our walk over the town was not very
fruitful. We got on the sea-wall and heard
the Gibraltar evening-gun roar out at us like
a released lion. We poked into small squares
paved with black and white pebbles in
patterns. We watched half the garrison driving
a bull into the slaughter-yard by pricking
him with bayonets, which, instead of making
him quieter, gave the chace the appearance of
a small bull-fight. We saw the bare yellow-
legged Moorish interpreters hob-nobbing
with the governor; under the guidance of
backsheesh-seeking Spanish artillerymen,
we traversed curtain and ravelin, and all the
angles and terraces of the fortress walls;
bought long tassels of purple and yellow
flowers, strung with Moorish taste, by a
street-boy; purchased Moorish cigar-cases
worked with dyed aloe thread; and stared at
the immense tufted reeds that kept crying
out to us in the gardens: "We are African!"
We were dazzled by a review of two or three
thousand men in the barrack-square; saw the
raw recruits from La Mancha put through
the difficult Hayband manœuvres, and retired
to our beds ready for the chivalrous touter,
who was to rouse us for the early zebec. We
had had quite enough of Africa. One thing