Romantic Spain Volume II Part 2

British Spain is small, being but one and seven-eighth square miles English in area; but it is mighty strong. The population, comprising the garrison, is less than fifteen thousand; but behind that slender cipher of souls are the millions of the broadest and biggest of empires. I do not know what the population of the cemetery is, but it receives rapid and numerous accessions at each periodical outbreak of cholera. I paid a visit to it--I have a fondness for sauntering in G.o.d's acre--and arrived in time to witness a funeral. When the coffin was laid in the grave, a young man, probably the husband of the deceased, threw himself p.r.o.ne on the turf beside the open burial-trench, and burst into such a pa.s.sionate tempest of heart-rending sobs and moans and wailings, that I had to move away. These Southerners are more demonstrative in their grief than the men of the North. I question if their sorrows spring from deeper depths, or are so lasting. The caretaker of the cemetery, an elderly Tipperary soldier, with a short _dudheen_ in his mouth, was seated smoking on a head-stone by a goat-willow. We got into conversation.

"There were worse places than Gib--singing-birds were raysonable here, and some of them had rayl beautiful plumage."

My countryman, like the Duke of Argyll, had a weakness for ornithology.

"That spread of land beyant was where the races were held, and small-arm parties from the fleet sometimes kem ash.o.r.e and practised there. They used to play cricket there, too. The symmetry wasn't a gay place, but there were worse. There were some beautiful tombs--now _there_ was a parable ov wan; 'twas put up by their frinds to some officers who were dhrownded while they were crossing a flooded sthrame on their way back from a shooting excursion. The car-drivers, who were dhrownded wid them, had no monument. 'Twas a quare world; a poor man had the chance of dying wid a rich man, but was not to be berrid in his company. Well, he supposed it was for the best," and here he hammered the heel-tap out of his pipe on the side of his shoe; "when the last bugle sounded a field-officer would feel uncomfortable like if he had to be looking for his bones in the same plot wid a lance-corporal."

Truly, a queer world. Death with impartial summons knocks at the cabin of the poor and the palace of the wealthy; but in the undertaker's interest the equality of the grave must not be conceded. The plebeian who commits _felo de se_ is served properly if he is hidden at the cross-roads by night and a stake driven through his body. The lunatic King who drowns himself, and drags his doctor to the same fate--who is a suicide duplicated with the suspicion of murder--is embalmed and laid to rest in consecrated ground amid incense and music, lights and flowers, the tolling of bells, and the chanting of dirges.

The funeral was over; they were just finishing the _De Profundis_. My countryman had to quit me. "_Oyeh!_ that fellow who was making such a lamentation might be married agin in a twelvemonth. The army plan was the best; after the 'Dead March' in _Saul_ came 'Tow-row-row.'--another so'jer was to be had for a shilling. He did not drink; he thanked me all the same--had taken the pledge from Father Mathew whin he was a boy, and meant to stick by it; but he would accept the price of a singing-bird he had set his mind upon, since it was pressed upon him."

Gibraltar is but a huge garrison. In the moat by the gate, as I re-entered, a big drummer and a tiny mannikin-soldier with cymbals were practising how to lead off a marching-past tune. The "Fortune of War"

tavern elbows "Horse-Barrack Lane;" a print of "The Siege of Kars" is side by side in a shop-window with Dr. Bennett's "Songs for Soldiers."

The Plazas and Calles of the mainland of Spain have been parted with.

The names of streets, hostelries, and stores are English. Instead of tiendas and almacenes and fondas, you have fancy repositories, regimental shoe-shops, and porter-houses. There, for example, is the celebrated "c.o.c.k and Bottle," and farther on "The Calfs Head Hotel." If you traverse Cathedral Square, no larger than an ordinary-sized skittle-alley, you arrive by Sunnyside Steps to the Europa Pa.s.s. Notices are posted by the roadside cautioning against plucking flowers or treading on the beds under pain of prosecution. But the bazaar bewilders you with its alien figures, its confusion of tongues, and its eccentric contrasts of dress. In five minutes you meet Spanish officers; nuns in broad-leaved white bonnets; a bearded sergeant nursing a baby; bare-legged, sun-burnished Moors; pink-and-white cheeked ladies'-maids from Kent; local mashers in such outrageously garish tweeds; stiff bra.s.s-b.u.t.toned turnkeys; Jews in skull-cap and Moslems in fez; and while you are lost in admiration of a burly negro, turbaned and in gra.s.s-green robe, with face black and shiny as a newly-polished stove, you are hustled by a sailor on cordial terms with himself who is vigorously attempting to whistle "Garry Owen."

But above and before all, the sights and sounds are military. Sappers and linesmen and artillerists pullulate at every corner; fatigue-parties are confronted at every turn; the bayonet of the sentinel flashes in every angle of the fortress from the minute the sun, bursting into instantaneous radiance from behind the great barrier of craggy hill, lights up the town and bastions and moles, until the boom of the sunset-gun gives signal for the gates to be closed. Every tavern looks like a canteen; the gossip is of things martial; the music is that of the reveille or tattoo--the blare of bra.s.s, the rub-a-dub of parchment, or the shrill sound-revel of Highland pipes (for there is usually a Scotch regiment here). The ladies one meets all have husbands, or fathers, or uncles in the Service; even the children--those of English parents well understood--keep step as they walk, and the boys amongst them compliment any well-dressed stranger with a home face by rendering him the regulation salute. This is highly gratifying to the civilian sojourning in the place; for he insensibly succ.u.mbs to the _genius loci_, squares his shoulders, expands his chest, and feels that if he is not an officer he ought to be one.

Except the enterprising gentry who devote themselves to cheating the Spanish excise by smuggling cigars and English goods across the border, the Scorpions live by and on the garrison, and therefore do I name their habitat Sutlersville. "Scorpion," I should add, for the benefit of the uninitiated, is the _sobriquet_ conferred by Tommy Atkins on the natives of the Rock, as that of "Smiches" is merrily applied by him to the Maltese, and of "Yamplants" to the denizens of St. Helena. There is a tolerable infusion of English blood among the Scorpions, but it is hardly of the healthiest or most respectable.

Gib is familiar to thousands of Englishmen, but it must be unfamiliar to many thousands more. This is my excuse for exhuming some notes of my stay there. Don't be afraid, I am not going to pester you with guide-book erudition. Let others take you to the galleries and caves, lead you up the ascent to the Moorish tower, inform you that the one spot in Europe where there is an indigenous colony of monkeys (the patriarch of which is styled the "town major") is here, and enlighten you as to the interesting fact that this is the only locality out of Ireland where the Irish jaunting-car is to be objurgated. Mine be a humbler task.

Society in Gib is select, but limited. It is uniform, like the clothes of the influential portion of the inhabitants. Gib is the wrong place to bring out a young lady, though Major Dalrymple's daughters, immortalized in Lever's novel, could not well have found a better hunting-ground. But then Major Dalrymple's daughters were regular garrison hacks--so the irreverent subs of the Rovers used to call them--and never stood a chance beside the daughters of the county families. There are racing and chasing at the station, and theatricals and b.a.l.l.s. I arrived at the wrong season. The three days' local racing, for horses of every breed but English, was over, and most of the men were going to Cadiz by special boat next day, _en route_ for the Jerez races, which are the best--indeed, I might almost say the solitary--meeting in Spain.

"There are only two things in this land worth talking about," said an English merchant to me at Cadiz; "the steamers of Lopez and the races of Jerez."

The hunting (thanks to brave old Admiral Fleming for having started that diversion) was over too. The meets have to come off, naturally, outside the frontier of British Spain. The sport is pretty good--one cannot quite expect the Melton country, of course--the riding hard, and the horses invariably Spanish; no English horses would do, for no English horse would be equal to climbing up a perpendicular bank with sixteen stone on his back, and that is a feat the native steeds, bestridden by British warriors in pink who follow the Calpe pack, have sometimes to accomplish. There is a Spanish lyrical and theatrical troop in the town; but it is Holy Week, and lyricals and theatricals are under taboo.

Occasionally charity concerts are given by amateurs, and plays are even performed in Lent Champagne, of the Fizzers, has won a reputation by his success on the boards when he dons the habiliments of lovely woman beyond a certain age. But, as I told you before, I arrived at the wrong season. There are no b.a.l.l.s at the Convent, which is the Governor's residence; and, touching these b.a.l.l.s, I have a grievance to ventilate, at the request of Mrs. Quartermaster Damages. She specially imported frilled petticoats from England to display in the mazy dance, and she a.s.sured me they were turning sere and yellow in her boxes. She never gets a chance of bringing them out except once in the twelvemonth, when she is asked to the "Quartermasters' Ball." But there is a reason for everything, and Mrs. Quartermaster Damages is fat and forty, and not fair, and--tell it not out of mess--they say she has a tongue.

At this particular time, you perceive, this fortified fragment of the empire was dull; but usually it is gay, and the officer quartered there has always an excellent opportunity of learning his trade and acquiring skill in the gentlemanly game of billiards. He can make maps and surveys of the neutral ground, and watch the guard mounting on the Alameda, or read the account of the siege in Drinkwater's days; and when he tires of the green cloth and its distractions, and of his own n.o.ble profession, he can throw a sail to the breeze in the unequalled Bay, or take a flying trip to Tarifa to sketch the beautiful from the living model, or go to Ceuta to see the Spanish galley-slaves and disciplinary regiments, forgetful of our own chain-gangs; or steam across to Tangier to riot in Nature and a day's pig-sticking.

The Bay, the Alameda, and Tarifa--these are the three delights of Gibraltar.

You have heard of the Bay of Naples, and the Bay of Dublin, which equals it in Paddy Murphy's estimation. I know both; and Gibraltar, the little-spoken-of, leaves them nowhere. The sky, and the undulating mirror below that reflects it, are such a blue; the rocks are such an ashen-grey; the Spanish sierras such a leonine brown, with summits wrapped in clouds like rolling smoke; and the sun goes down to his bath in the west 'mid such a vaporous glow of yellowing purple and rosy gold!

The Alameda is a bower of Venus cinctured by Mars. Here is a gravelled expanse bounded by hill and sea, with cosy benches under the shade of palmitos--the civilization of the West in alliance with the rich vegetation of the East. Sometimes, in the morning, five hundred men or more--garrison artillery, engineers, and infantry--muster there, previous to marching to their posts; there is a banging of drums, a blowing of bugles, a bobbing vision of c.o.c.ked-hats, and a roar of hoa.r.s.e words of command--all the pomp and pride and circ.u.mstance of glorious war before the fighting begins. Sometimes, in the evening, a band plays, and the Alameda is the resort of fashion and of nursery-maids.

Tarifa, shining in the sunset across the water, is a tempting morsel for the landscape-painter, and the dwellers in Tarifa are the best teachers of Spanish. A British subaltern bent on improving his mind could encounter an infinitely better preceptor there than "Jingling Johnny,"

the self-appointed professor to the garrison, who hires himself on Monday, makes you a present of a guitar-tutor on Tuesday, and asks you to favour him with six months' payment in advance on Wednesday. To be sure, the Spanish those Tarifans speak is slightly Arabified; but their tones of voice are persuasive, and their methods of teaching agreeable.

The professor taken by the British subaltern is invariably a female, and the females of Tarifa are not the ugliest in the world. They still retain many customs peculiar to their Moorish ancestors. They wear a manta, not a mantilla--a sort of large-hooded mantle, with which they hide the light of their countenance, except an eye--but that is a piercer, ye G.o.ds I and they keep it open for business. When a stranger pa.s.ses, especially if he looks like a sucking lieutenant from the fortress beyond, the manta falls, disclosing the soft loveliness beneath, and the wearer affects a pretty confusion, and hastens with judicious slowness to re-adjust its folds. The British subaltern reels to his quarters seriously wounded, and may be seen the following morning, with his hair blown back, spouting poetry to the zephyrs on Europa Point. Oh no!--that only occurs in romances; but he may be seen drinking brandy-and-soda moderately in the Club-House.

Poor British subaltern! How Sutlersville does exploit him! He is a sheep, and bears his fleecing without a kick. Watch those lazy, lounging, able-bodied, smoking, and salivating loons who prop up every street-corner, and monopolize the narrow pathways--these all live by him; they eat up his substance, and fatten thereupon. These are the touting and speculating sons of the Rock, the veritable Scorpions, who are ever ready to find the "cap'n" a dog or a horse or a boat, or something not so harmless, to help him on the road to ruin, and whisper in his ear what a fine fellow he is--"As ver fine a fellow--real gemman--as Lord Tomnoddy, who give me such a many dollars when he go away." The first word these loons p.r.o.nounce after coming into the world must be _baksheesh_. They are born with beggary in their mouths, and the British subaltern acts as if he were born to be their victim. There he is below, of every type, lolling outside the hotel-door that looks on that Commercial Square which is so thorough a barrack-square, with its romping children, its dogs, its dust, its guard-house with chatting soldiers on a form in front, and the important sentinel pacing to and fro, regular and rigid as a pendulum, keeping vigilant watch and ward over nothing in particular. We have a rare company to-day; besides the engineers and bombardiers, and the linesmen of the 24th, 31st, 71st, and 81st, the four infantry regiments on the station, we have men on leave from Malta. They came up to the races, and are waiting for the P. and O.

steamer to take them back. That fat little customer is your sporting sub. I only wonder he is not in cords, tops, and spurs. What a hearty voice he talks in! He asks for the _Field_ as if he were giving a view-halloo. Then there is the moist-eyed, mottle-cheeked, puffy, convivial sub, who is knowing on the condition of ale, and is too friendly with Saccone's sherry. The convivial sub, I am happy to say, is dying out. Then there is the prig, who is "going in" for his profession.

I call him a prig, because when people are going in for anything they should have the good sense not to blow about it. To hear Mr. Sh.e.l.ls and his prattle about Hamley and Brialmont and Jomini, _kriegspiel_ and the new drill, you would imagine he was bound to put the extinguisher on Marlborough, Wellington, Wolseley, and the rest of them; and yet the chances are, if you meet him twenty years hence, he will be a captain on the recruiting service, with no forces to marshal but six growing children. Then there is the sentimental sub, the perfect ladies' man, who plays croquet and the flute, pleads guilty to having cultivated the Nine, and affects a simpering pooh-pooh when he is impeached with having inspired that wicked but so witty bit of scandal in the local paper. By singularity of pairing, his fast friend is the muscular sub, who walks against time, and can write his initials with a hundredweight hanging from his index-finger.

Happy dogs in the heyday of life, all of them; how I envy them their buoyant spirits, their rollicking enjoyment of to-day, and their contempt for the morrow! But the morrow will come nevertheless, and with it Black Care will come often. Gib is a haunt of the Hebrews; they or their myrmidons beset the subaltern at genial hours, after luncheon or after mess, pester him with vamped-up knick-knacks for sale, appeal to him to patronize a poor man by buying articles he does not and never by any means can want--"pay me when you likes, Cap'n, one yearsh, two yearsh." The "cap'n," who may have left Sandhurst but six months, may be weakly good-natured, and ignore the fact that his income is not elastic; some day that he thinks of taking a run to England Ben Solomon, who seems to be able to read the books in the Adjutant-General's Office through the walls, pounces upon him with his little bill, and he is arrested if he cannot satisfy his Jewish benefactor. Loans are advanced at a high rate "per shent" by the harpies, and enable him to stave off the temporary embarra.s.sment; the "cap'n" is happy for the moment, but the reckoning is only deferred that it may grow. The arrival of Black Care is adjourned, not averted. The plain truth of it is, Gibraltar is a den of thieves, and has been the burial-pit of many a promising young fellow's hopes. There are two tariffs for everything--one for natives, the other for the British subaltern and the British tourist; and the British subaltern and the British tourist are foolish enough to submit to the extortion in most cases. With some half-dozen honourable exceptions, the traders are what is popularly known as "Jews" in their mode of dealing. They cozen on principle, sell articles that will not last, and charge preposterous prices for them; they impose upon the young officer's softness or delicate gentlemanly feeling, and consider themselves smart for so doing. In this manner Gibraltar, with all its discomforts, is dearer than the most expensive and luxurious quarter in the British Isles.

But we have other specimens of the genus officer in the lounging slaughterers by profession, who are so busy killing time. The lean bronzed aristocratic major, whose temper long years in India have not soured; the squat pursy paymaster (why are paymasters so fearfully inclined to fat?); the raw-boned young surgeon with the Aberdeen accent; "the ranker," erect and grizzled, and looking ever so little not quite at his ease, you know, for the languid lad with fawn-coloured moustache straddling on the chair beside him is an Honourable; the jovial portly Yorkshireman, who is in the Highland Light Infantry, naturally; and the lively loud-voiced Irishman, laughing consumedly at his own jokes--all are here, conversing, smoking, mildly chaffing each other, and exchanging "tips" as to the next Derby. They make a book in a quiet way, and occasionally invest in a dozen tickets in a Spanish lottery. What will you? One cannot perpetually play shop, and the British officer has a rooted objection to it, although he does his duty like a man when the tug of war arises. Better that he should join in a regimental sweepstakes, or lose what he can afford to lose to a comrade, than give way to the blues. He does not gamble or curse, like his Spanish _confrere_; his potations are not deep, nor is he quick to quarrel. Then let him race on the Neutral Ground; let him hunt with the Calpe pack; and let him back his fancy for the big event at Epsom. Those are his chief excitements at Gib, and help to give a fillip to life in that circ.u.mscribed microcosm, pending the anxiously expected morn when the route will come, or, mayhap, the call to active service, in one of those petty wars which are constantly breaking the monotony of this so-called pacific reign.

"Guard, turn out!" cries the Highland Light Infantry sentinel under my window, and the smart soldier laddies fall in for the inspection of the officer of the day. What a thoroughly military town it is! By-and-by the evening gun booms from the heights above, where Sergeant Munro, taking time from his sun-dial and the town major, notifies the official sunset.

Bang go the gates. We are imprisoned. Anon the streets are traversed by patrols in Indian file to warn loiterers to return to barracks, the pipers of the 71st skirl a few wild tunes on Commercial Square, the buglers sound the last post, the second gun-fire is heard, and a hush falls over the town, broken only by the challenges of sentries or their regular echoing footfalls on their weary beats. The thunder of artillery wakes you in the morning anew, and if you venture out for a walk before breakfast you thread your way through waggons of the army train or fatigue-parties in white jackets. You stumble across cannon and symmetric pyramids of shot where you least expect them; the line of sea-wall is intersected by figures in brick-red tunic, moving back and forward on ledges of masonry; the morning air is alive with drum-beats and bugle and trumpet-calls; everything is of the barrack most barrack-like; the broad arrow is indented in large deep character on the Rock. It is impossible to shake off the Ordnance atmosphere. The Irish jaunting-cars are all driven by the sons of soldiers' wives; the clergy-men are all military chaplains; those goats are going up to be milked for the major's delicate daughter; that lady practising horse exercise in a ring in her garden is wife to Pillicoddy of the Control Department, and is merely correcting the neglected education of her youth; the very monkeys--diminishing sadly, it grieves me to say--recall a.s.sociations of the mess-room, for you never fail to hear of that terrible sportsman, "one of Cardwell's gents," who thought it excellent fun to shoot one some time ago. Luckily, the rules of the service did not permit him to be tried by court-martial, or the wretched boy might have been ordered out for instant execution, so great was the indignation. But if he was not shot he was roasted as fearfully as ever St. Laurence was; he was reminded a thousand times if once that fratricide is a fearful crime, and if ever Nemesis visits his pillow it will be in the shape of a monkey without a tail.

One wearies of the same scenes of beauty, and would fain barter the Cork Woods for the chestnuts in Bushy Park; the bright Bay and the watchet sky pall on the senses, and a dull river and drab clouds would be welcomed for change. The day rises when the conversation of the same set, the stories repeated as often as that famous one of grouse in the gun-room, and the stale jokes anent the Sheeref of Wazan and the rival innkeepers of Tangier, black Martin and "Lord James," cloy like treacle; the fiction palmed upon the latest novice that he must go and have a few shots at the monkeys, if he wishes to curry favour at headquarters, misses fire; the calls of the P. and O. steamers, and the thought that their pa.s.sengers within a week either have seen, or will see, the little village works its effect; even bull-fighting is adjudged a bore, and one sighs for Regent Street and the "Rag and Famish," flaxen ringlets, and roast bee A twelvemonth might pa.s.s pleasantly on the Rock; but after that the "d.a.m.nable iteration" of existence must jar on the nerves like the note of a cuckoo. Still, as my philosopher of the cemetery remarked, there are worse places--far worse, a.s.souan and Aden, for example; so let not the gallant gentleman repine whom Fate has a.s.signed to a round of duty in Sutlersville. For Tommy Atkins of the rank and file, it is wearisome when he is young; he should not be asked to stay there longer than a twelvemonth while he is at the age which yearns for novelty, and during that twelvemonth he should be drilled as at the depot. For the old soldier it is a good station, and should be made a haven of rest.

CHAPTER V.

From Pillar to Pillar--Historic Souvenirs--Off to Africa--The Sweetly Pretty Albert--Gibraltar by Moonlight--The Chain-Gang--Across the Strait--A Difficult Landing--Albert is Hurt--"Fat Mahomet"--The Calendar of the Centuries Put Back--Tangier: the People, the Streets, the Bazaar--Our Hotel--A Coloured Gentleman--Seeing the Sights--Local Memoranda--Jewish Disabilities--Peep at a Photographic Alb.u.m--The Writer's Notions on Harem Life.

I WAS gradually getting into the mood of Pistol, and cried a foutra for the world of business and worldlings base. My soul was longing for "Africa and golden joys." Here I was at the elbow, so to speak, of the mysterious Continent, where the geographers set down elephants for want of towns. Why should I not visit it? I might never have such a chance again. I stood in the shadow of one Pillar of Hercules. Why not make pilgrimage to the other? Having notched Calpe on my staff, I resolved to add Abyla to the record.

I was the more inclined to this, as I had recollection that Tangier had been part of the British dominions for one-and-twenty years. In 1662 Catharine of Braganza, the "olivader-complexioned queen of low stature, but prettily shaped," whose teeth wronged her mouth by sticking a little too far out, brought it as portion of her dowry to Charles II. The 2nd, or Queen's Own Regiment, was raised to garrison the post, and sported its sea-green facings, the favourite colour of her Majesty, for long in the teeth of the threatening Moors. The 1st Dragoons still bear the nickname of "the Tangier Horse," and were originally formed from some troops of cuira.s.siers who a.s.sisted in the defence of the African stronghold for seventeen years; and the 1st Foot Regiment owes its t.i.tle of "Royal" to the distinction it gained by capturing a flag from the Moors in 1680. That was the year when old John Evelyn noted in his diary that Lord Ossorie was deeply touched at having been appointed Governor and General of the Forces, "to regaine the losses we had lately sustain'd from the Moors, when Inchqueene was Governor." His lordship relished the commission so little--indeed, it was a forlorn errand--that he took a malignant fever after a supper at Fishmongers' Hall, went home, and died. In 1683 the Merry Monarch caused the works of Tangier to be blown up, and abandoned the place, declaring it was not worth the cost of keeping. The Merry Monarch was not prescient. A century afterwards Gibraltar was indebted for a large proportion of its supplies, during the great siege, to the dismantled and deserted British-African fortress. For many reasons Tangier was not to be missed.

By a happy coincidence a party of three in the Club-House Hotel--a retired army captain, his wife, and a lady companion--were anxious to take a trip to Africa. We agreed to go together, and had scarcely made up our minds, when another retired captain, who habitually resided in Tangier, gratified us by the information that he was returning there, and would be happy to give us every a.s.sistance in his power. Retired Captain No. 1 was a jolly fellow, fond of good living and not overburdened with aestheticism--a capital specimen of a hearty Yorkshireman. He looked after the provand. His wife, portly and short of temper, was as good-natured as he. She insisted on discharging the bills. The lady-companion was thin, accomplished, and melancholy. She kept us in sentiment. Retired Captain No. 2 was a fellow-countryman of mine, bright-brained and waggish. He was the walking guide-book, with philosophy and friendship combined. I was nigh forgetting one, and not by any means the least important, member of the party--Albert. Mrs.

Captain introduced him to me as a sweetly pretty creature. At her request I looked after him. Tastes vary as to what const.i.tutes beauty, but I candidly think a broad thick head, crop ears, a flattish nose, and heavy jowls could not be called sweetly pretty without straining a point; and all these Albert possessed. He was a bull-dog (I believe his real name was Bill, and that he had been brought up in Whitechapel). As a bull-dog he had excellent points, and might be esteemed a model of symmetry and breeding by the fancy, or even p.r.o.nounced a beauty and exquisitely proportioned by connoisseurs; but sweetly pretty--never! I could not stomach that, especially when Albert growled and laid bare his ruthless set of sound white teeth.

Before leaving Gibraltar I had two novel sensations, nocturnal and matutinal. The first was a view of the Bay by moonlight, the white crescent shining clearly down on a portion of the inner waters brinded by shipping, and on the outer spread of sleepy, cadenced wavelets rippling phosph.o.r.escently under the pallid rays. By the Mole were visible the outlines of barques, steamers, coal-brigs, and xebecs; away to the left were the _Catapult_ and a few of her mosquito companions; and far out rode at anchor a stately frigate of the United States'

fleet. The twinkling lamps of the city afloat sending out reddish lines, and the fuller, clearer, luminous pencillings of the gas-lamps of the city ash.o.r.e, made a not ungrateful contrast to the quivering chart of poetic moonbeams. Bending over their edge were the deep shadows of the ma.s.sive Rock; and bounding them, at the other side, the barren foot-hills of Algeciras mellowed into a phantom softness by distance and the night.

Next morning, as I strolled by the sea-wall towards the Ragged Staff Battery, I saw a sight that took away my appet.i.te for breakfast. Pacing slowly to their work to the music of clanking chains was a column of wretched convicts.[A] What haggard faces, with low foreheads, sunken eyes, and dogged moody expression or utter blankness of expression!

Purely animal the most of that legion of despair and desperation looked, and sallow and sickly of complexion. They were a blot on the fresh sunshine. How hideous their coa.r.s.e garb of pied jackets branded with the broad arrow, their knickerbockers and clumsy shoes! Wistfully they moved along, hardly daring to glance at me, through fear of the turnkeys with loaded rifles marching at their sides. I almost felt that, if I had the power, I would demand their release, as did the Knight of La Mancha that of the criminals on their way to the galleys, although they might have been as ungrateful as Gines de Pa.s.samonte; but those hang-dog countenances banished impulses of chivalry.

The little steamer, the _Spahi_, which conveyed us across the Strait, was seaworthy for all her cranky appearance, and made the pa.s.sage of thirty-two miles quickly and comfortably for all her roughness of accommodation. She was a cargo-boat, but her skipper was English, and did his best to make the ladies feel at home. Besides, Captain No. 1 had brought a select basket of provisions and a case of dry, undoctored champagne. One of our first experiences as we cleared Algeciras, with turrets like our martello-towers sentinelling the hills, and the three-masted wreck--"Been twenty-one days there," said the skipper, "and not an effort has been made to raise it yet, and not even a warning light is hung over it at night"--was to sight a bottle-nosed whale puffing and spewing its predatory course.

"What are those ruins upon the Spanish sh.o.r.e for?" asked the accomplished lady.

When she was informed that they were the beacons raised in the days of old, when the Moorish corsairs haunted that coast, and that the moment the pirate sail was descried in the offing (I hope this is correctly nautical) the warning fire blazed by night, or the warning plume of smoke went up by day, to summon Spain's chivalry to the rescue, she was enchanted, and recited a pa.s.sage from Macaulay's "Armada."

We made the transit in a little over three hours, and, rounding the Punta de Malabata, cut into the Bay of Tangier, and eased off steam at some distance from the Atlantic-washed sh.o.r.e. There is no pier, but a swell and discoloration, projecting in straight line seawards, marks where a mole had once stood. That was a piece of British handiwork; but the Moor, who is no more tormented by the demon of progress than the Turk, had literally let it slide, until it sank under the waters.

The Sultana of Moorish cities Tangier is sometimes called, and truly she does wear a regal, sultana-like air as seen from afar, cushioned in state on the hillside, her white flat roofs rising one above another like the steps of a marble staircase, the tall minarets of the mosques piercing the air, and the mult.i.tudinous many-coloured flags of all nations fluttering above the various consulates. But in this, as in so many other instances, it is distance which lends enchantment to the view.

We went as near to the sh.o.r.e as we could in small boats, and when we grounded, a fellowship of clamouring, unkempt, half-naked Barbary Jews, skull-capped, with their shirts tied at their waists and short cotton drawers, rushed forward to meet us, and carry us pickaback to dry land.

The ladies were borne in chairs, slung over the shoulders of two of these amphibious porters, or on an improvised seat made by their linked hands, but to preserve their equilibrium the dear creatures had to clasp their arms tightly round the necks of the natives. This would not look well in a picture, above all if the lady were a professional beauty. But there was nothing wrong in it, any more than in Amaryllis clinging to the embrace of Strephon in the whirling of a waltz. Custom reconciles to everything. On stepping into the small boat I had my first difficulty with Albert. I trod on his tail. The dog looked reproachfully, but did not moan. His mistress scowled, and warned me to take care what I was about for an awkward fool. Her husband, with a pained look on his face, mutely apologized for her, and I humbly excused myself and vowed amendment. I am not revengeful, but I did enjoy it when one of the porters, tottering under the weight of the fat lady, made a false step and nearly gave her a sousing. I clambered on my particular Berber's back, dear Albert in my arms, and we splashed merrily along; but Captain No. 1, who turned the scales at seventeen stone two pounds, had not so uneventful a landing. Twice his bearer halted, and the warrior, abandoning himself to his fate, swore he would make the Berber's nose probe the sand if he stumbled.

As I was discharged on the beach, I was confronted by a majestic Moor.

His grave brown face was fringed with a closely-trimmed jet-black beard, and his upper lip was shaded with a jet-black moustache. He wore a white turban and a wide-sleeved ample garment of snowy white, flowing in graceful folds below his knees; and on his feet were loose yellow slippers, peaked and turned up at the toes. This was Mahomet Lamarty, better known as "Fat Mahomet," who had acted as interpreter to the British troops in the Crimea, and who, at this period, was making an income by supplying subalterns from Gib with masquerade suits to take home and horses to ride. Mahomet in his sphere was a great man. He was none of your loquacious _valets de place_, no courier of the Transcendental school. He had made the pilgrimage to Mecca and was a Hadji; he was a chieftain of a tribe in the vicinity, and had fought in the war against the Spanish infidels; he could borrow his purest and finest Arab from the Kadi; he was free to the sacred garden of the Shereef, or Pope-Sultan, one of the descendants of the Prophet, Allah be praised!

Mahomet, who was known to both the Captains, pa.s.sed our small impedimenta through the custom-house--there is an orthodox custom-house, though there is no proper accommodation for shipping--and we trailed at his heels up the close, crowded, rough alleys which did duty as streets.

It would be hard to imagine a more thorough-going change than our scurry across the waves had effected. We were in another world completely. We had been transported as on the carpet of the magician. It was as if the calendar had been put back for centuries, and the half-forgotten personages of the "Thousand-and-One Nights" were revivified and had their being around us.

Tangier is a walled and fortified town; but Vauban had no hand in the fortifications, and it is my private opinion the walls would go down before a peremptory horn-blast quicker than those of Jericho. It swarms with a motley population much addicted to differences in shades of complexion. The Tangerines exhaust the primitive colours and most of the others in their features. There are lime-white Tangerines, copper and canary-countenanced Tangerines, olive and beetroot-hued Tangerines, Tangerines of the tint of the bottom of pots, Tangerines of every--no, I beg to recall that, there are no well-defined blue or green Tangerines; at least, none that came under my ken. The town is as old as the hills and courageously uncivilized. There is no gasholder, no railway-station, no theatre, no cab-stand, no daily paper, and no drainage board to go into controversy over. It is unconsciously backward, near as it is to Europe--a rifle-shot off the track of ships plying from the West to the ports of the Mediterranean. It preserves its Eastern aroma with a fine Moslem conservatism. Its ramparts of crumbling masonry are ornamented with ancient cannon useless for offence, useless for defence. There is said to be a saluting-battery; but the legend runs that the gunners require a week's clear notice before firing a salute.[B] There is no locomotion save in boxes and on the backs of quadrupeds; and quadrupeds of the inferior order are usually, when overtaken by death, thrown in the streets to decompose. But if the irregularity of the town would galvanize the late Monsieur Haussmann in his grave, its situation would satisfy the most exacting Yankee engineer. It is huddled in a sheltered nest on the fringe of a land of milk and honey; it has the advantage of a spread of level beach, and rejoices in the balmiest of climes.

The streets are so narrow that you could light a cigar from your neighbour's window on the opposite side; but there is no window, neither at this side nor the other. A hole with a grating is the only window that is visible. Moors are jealous, and to be able to appreciate their household comforts you must first succeed in turning their houses inside out. Those who have dived into the recesses say the fruit is as savoury as the husk is repulsive. The windowless houses with their backs grudgingly turned to the thoroughfares are low for the most part, and the thoroughfares are--oh! so crooked--zigzag, up and down, staggering in a drunken way over hard cobble-stones and leading nowhere. There are mosques and stores entered by horse-shoe arches, a bazaar dotted over with squatting women, cowled with dirty blankets, selling warm griddle-cakes; moving here and there are the same spectral figures, similar dirty blankets veiling them from head to foot; over the way are cylinders of mat, with nets caging the apertures at each end, to hold the c.o.c.ks and hens, rabbits and pigeons, brought for sale by Riffians, descendants of the corsairs of that ilk, stalwart, brown, and bare-legged, with heads shaven but for the twisted scalp-lock left for the convenience of Asrael when he is dragging them up to Paradise.

Hebrews have their standings around, and deal in strips of cotton, bra.s.s dishes, and slippers, or change money, or are ready for anything in the shape of barter. Seated in the shade of that small niche in the wall, as on a tailor's shop-board, is an adool, or public notary, selling advice to a client; in the alcove next him is a worker in beads and filigree; from a dusty forge beyond comes the clang of anvils, where half-naked smiths are hammering out bits or fashioning horse-shoes. Mules with Bedouins perched, chin on shin, amid the bales of merchandise on their backs, cross the bazaar at every moment; or files of donkeys, stooping under bundles of f.a.ggots, pick their careful way. By-and-by--but this is not a frequent sight--a Moslem swell ambles past on a barb, gorgeous in caparisons, the enormous peaked saddle held in its place by girths round the beast's breast and quarters, and covered with scarlet hammer-cloth.

If we move about and examine the stalls, we see lumps of candied sweetmeats here; charms, snuff-boxes made of young cocoanuts and beads there; and jars of milk or baskets of dates elsewhere. At the fountain yonder, contrived in the wall, mud approached by rugged, sloppy steps, water-carriers, wide-mouthed negro slaves, male and female, with bra.s.s curtain-rings in their ears, and skins blacker than the moonless midnight, come and go the whole day long, and gossip or wrangle with loafers in coa.r.s.e mantles and burnous of stuff striped like leopard-skin. Beside the silent, gliding, ghost-like Mahometan women and the Hottentot Venus, you have Rebecca in gaudy kerchief and Dona Dolores in silken skirt and lace mantilla from neighbouring Spain. In the mingling crowd all is novelty, all is noise, all is queer and shifting and diversified.