Tales from Blackwood Volume I Part 11

The Eagle stooping from the sky Shall fold his wing and rest him here, And sunwards gaze with glowing eye From Buonaparte's bier.

A LEGEND OF GIBRALTAR.

BY COLONEL E. B. HAMLEY.

[_MAGA._ NOVEMBER 1851.]

CHAPTER I.

The Governor's residence at Gibraltar was, in days of Spanish domination, a religious house, and still retains the name of the Convent. Two sides of a long quadrangular gallery, traversing the interior of the building, are hung with portraits of officers present at the great siege in 1779-83, executed in a style which proves that Pre-Raphaelite painters existed in those days. One of these portraits represents my grandfather. To judge from a painting of him by Sir Joshua, and a small miniature likeness, both still in possession of the family, he must have been rather a good-looking old gentleman, with an affable, soldier-like air, and very respectable features. The portrait at the Convent is doubtless a strong likeness, but by no means so flattering; it represents him much as he might have appeared in life, if looked at through a cheap opera-gla.s.s. A full inch has been abstracted from his forehead and added to his chin; the bold nose has become a great promontory in the midst of the level countenance; the eyes have gained in ferocity what they have lost in speculation, and would, indeed, go far to convey a disagreeable impression of my ancestor's character, but for the inflexible smile of the mouth.

Altogether, the grimness of the air, the buckram rigidity of figure, and the uncompromising hardness of his s.h.i.+rt-frill and the curls of his wig, are such as are to be met with in few works of art, besides the figure-heads of vessels and the sign-boards of country inns.

However, my grandfather is no worse off than his compeers. Not far from this one is another larger painting, representing a council of officers held during the siege, where, notwithstanding the gravity of the occasion and the imminence of the danger, not a single face in the intrepid a.s.sembly wears the slightest expression of anxiety or fear, or, indeed, of anything else; and though my progenitor, in addition to the graces of the other portrait, is here depicted with a squint, yet he is by no means the most ill-looking individual present. But the ill.u.s.trious governor, Eliott, has suffered more than anybody at the hands of the artist. Besides figuring in the production aforesaid, a statue of him stands in the Alameda, carved in some sort of wood, unluckily for him, of a durable nature. The features are of a very elevated cast, especially the nose; the little legs seem by no means equal to the task of sustaining the enormous c.o.c.ked-hat; and the bearing is so excessively military, that it has been found necessary to prop the great commander from behind to prevent him from falling backwards.

My grandfather, John Flinders, joined the garrison of Gibraltar as a major of infantry a few years before the siege. He was then forty-seven years of age, and up to that time had remained one of the most determined old bachelors that ever existed. Not that he ever declaimed against matrimony in the style of some of our young moderns, who fancy themselves too strong-minded to marry; the truth being that they remain single, either because they have not been gifted by nature with tastes sufficiently strong to like one woman better than another, or else, because no woman ever took the trouble to lay siege to them.

My grandfather had never married, simply, I believe, because matrimony had never entered his head. He seldom ventured, of his own choice, into ladies' society, but, when he did, no man was more emphatically gallant to the s.e.x. One after one, he saw his old friends abandoning the irresponsible ease of bachelorhood for the cares of wedded life; but while he duly congratulated them on their felicity, and officiated as G.o.dfather to their progeny, he never seemed to antic.i.p.ate a similar destiny for himself. All his habits showed that he had been too long accustomed to single harness to go cleverly as one of a pair.

He had particular hours of rising and going to bed; of riding out and returning; of settling himself down for the evening to a book and pipe, which the presence of a helpmate would have materially deranged.

And therefore, without holding any Malthusian tenets, without pitying his Bened.i.c.k acquaintances, or entertaining a thought of the s.e.x which would have been in the least degree derogatory to the character of a De Coverley, his castles in the air were never tenanted by any of his own posterity.

It was fortunate for my grandfather that in his time people did not suffer so much as now from that chronic inflammation of the conscience, which renders them perfectly miserable unless they are engaged in some tangible pursuit--"improving their minds," or "adding to the general stock of information." A more useless, contented person never existed. He never made even a show of employing himself profitably, and never complained of weariness in maintaining the monotonous jog-trot of his simple daily life. He read a good deal, certainly, but it was not to improve his mind, only to amuse himself.

Strong-minded books, to stimulate his thinking faculties, would have had no charms for him; he would as soon have thought of getting galvanised for the pleasure of looking at his muscles. And I don't know whether it was not just as well. In systematically cultivating his mind, he would merely have been laying a top-dressing on a thin soil--manuring where there would never have been a crop--and some pleasant old weeds would have been pulled up in the process. A green thistly common, even though a goose could hardly find sustenance there, is nature still, which can hardly be said of a patch of earth covered with guano.

So my grandfather went on enjoying himself without remorse after his own fas.h.i.+on, and never troubled himself to think--an operation that would have been inconvenient to himself, and productive of no great results to the world. He transplanted his English habits to Gibraltar; and, after being two years there, knew nothing more of Spain or Spaniards than the view of the Andalucian hills from the Rock, and a short const.i.tutional daily ride along the beach beyond the Spanish lines, to promote appet.i.te and digestion, afforded him. And so he might have continued to vegetate during the remainder of his service there, but for a new acquaintance that he made about this time.

Frank Owen, commonly called Garry Owen by his familiars, was one of those joyous spirits whose pleasant faces and engaging manners serve as a perpetual act of indemnity for all breaches of decorum, and trespa.s.ses over social and conventional fences, committed by them in the gaiety of their hearts. In reproving his many derelictions of military duty, the grim colonel of the regiment would insensibly exchange his habitual tone of severe displeasure for one of mild remonstrance--influenced, probably, quite as much, in secret, by the popularity of the unrepentant offender, as by any personal regard for him. Captain Hedgehog, who had shot a man through the heart for corking his face one night when he was drunk, and all contact with whose detonating points of honour was as carefully avoided by his acquaintance as if they had been the wires of a spring-gun, sustained Garry's reckless personalities with a sort of warning growl utterly thrown away upon the imperturbable wag, who would still persist, in the innocence of his heart, in playing round the den of this military c.o.c.katrice. And three months after his arrival in Gibraltar, being one day detected by a fierce old Spanish lady in the very act of kissing her daughter behind the little senorita's great painted fan, his good-humoured impudence converted the impending storm into a mild drizzle of reproof, ending in his complete restoration to favour.

This youth had brought with him from England a letter from his mother, a widow lady, an old friend of my grandfather, who had some thirty years before held with her a juvenile flirtation. It recommended to his protection her son Frank, about to join the regiment as an ensign, pathetically enlarging on the various excellencies, domestic and religious, which shone forth conspicuously in the youth's character, and of the comfort of contemplating and superintending which she was about to be deprived. In fact, it had led my grandfather to expect a youth of extreme docility and modesty, requiring a protector rather to embolden than to restrain him. After in vain attempting to espy in his young acquaintance any of the characteristics ascribed to him in his mother's letter, the Major, naturally good-natured and accessible to his youthful comrades, very soon suffered himself to be influenced by the good-humour, vigorous vitality, and careless cleverness of the Ensign, to an extent that caused him sometimes to wonder secretly at his own transformation. His retired habits were broken in upon, one after the other, till he had scarcely a secluded hour in his sixteen waking ones to enjoy alone his book and his pipe. His peaceful quarters, silent in general as a monk's cell, would now be invaded at all sorts of hours by the jovial Garry, followed by the admiring satellites who usually revolved around him; and the Major, with a sound between a groan and a chuckle, would close his well-beloved volume to listen to the facetious details of, and sometimes to partic.i.p.ate in, the uncongenial freaks of the humorous subaltern. Once he had actually consented, at about the hour he usually went to bed, to accompany the youth to a Carnival ball--one of a series of entertainments at which the Catholic youth of the city are wont to indemnify themselves for the mortifications of Lent, and where masks, dominoes, and fancy dresses lend their aid to defeat the vigilance of the lynx-eyed duennas and mammas who look anxiously on, perfectly aware, in general, that their own watchfulness is more to be relied on for nipping in the bud an indiscreet amour, than any innate iciness of temperament or austere propriety in the objects of their care. Not only did the Major mingle in the scene, but he actually, about midnight, found himself figuring in a cotillon with a well-developed senorita of thirteen years, whose glances and deportment showed a precocious proficiency in the arts of flirtation. At this ball Garry had become enamoured beyond all former pa.s.sions (and they were numerous and inconstant, in general, as if he had been a Grand Turk) of one of his partners, a young Spanish lady. Her graceful figure and motions in the dance had at first captivated him--and when, after dancing with her himself, his eloquent entreaties, delivered in indifferent Spanish, had prevailed on her to lift her mask for one coy moment, the vision of eyes and eyebrows (the common beauties of a Spanish countenance), and the clear rosy complexion, a much more rare perfection, then revealed, had accomplished the utter subjugation of his errant fancy. She had vanished from the ball silently and irremediably, as a houri of Paradise from the awakening eyes of an opium-eating Pasha; and all his attempts to trace her, continued unceasingly for a couple of months afterwards, had proved in vain.

One morning my grandfather was seated at breakfast in the verandah of his quarters, situated high up the rock above the town. Below him lay the roofs, terraced and balconied, and populous with cats, for whose convenience the little flat stone squares at the top of most of the houses appeared to have been devised. Tall towers, called mirandas, shot up at intervals, from whose summits the half-baked inhabitants, pent within close walls and streets, might catch refres.h.i.+ng glimpses of the blue sea and the hills of Spain--conveniences destined soon afterwards to be ruined by the enemy's fire, or pulled down to avoid attracting it, and never rebuilt. Beyond the white sunny ridge of the line wall came the sharp edge of the bay, rising in high perspective to the purple coast of Spain opposite, which was sprinkled with buildings white as the sails that dotted the water. My grandfather was in a state of great sensual enjoyment, sniffing up the odour of the large geranium-bushes that grew in clumps in the little garden in front, and the roses that twined thickly round the trellis of the vine-roofed verandah; sipping thick creamy Spanish chocolate between the mouthfuls of red mullet, broiled in white paper, the flavour of which he was diligently comparing with that of some specimens of the same fish which he remembered to have eaten in his youth in Devons.h.i.+re; and glancing sideways over the cup at an open volume of Shakespeare, leaned slopingly on the edge of a plate of black figs bursting with ripeness, like trunk-hose slashed with crimson. The Major was none of your skimming readers, who glance through a work of art as if it were a newspaper--measure, weigh it, and deliver a critical opinion on it, before the more reverential student has extricated himself from the toils of the first act or opening chapter: not he; he read every word, and affixed a meaning, right or wrong, to all the hard, obsolete ones. The dramatic fitness of the characters was not to be questioned by him, any more than that of the authentic personages of history. He would reason on their acts and proceedings as on those of his own intimate acquaintances. He never could account for Hamlet's madness otherwise than by supposing the Prince must have, some time or other, got an ugly rap on the head--let fall, perhaps, when a baby, by a gin-drinking nurse--producing, as in some persons he had himself from time to time been acquainted with, a temporary aberration of the wits; a piece of original criticism that has not occurred to any of the other commentators on this much-discussed point. Of Iago he has recorded an opinion in an old note-book still extant, where his observations appear in indifferent orthography, and ink yellow with age, that he was a cursed scoundrel--an opinion delivered with all the emphasis of an original detector of crime, anxious that full though tardy justice should be done to the delinquent's memory. But his great favourite was Falstaff: "A wonderful clever fellow, sir," he would say, "and no more a coward than you or I, sir."

My grandfather proceeded slowly with his meal, holding the cup to his lips with one hand and turning a leaf with the other--an operation which he was delaying till a great mosquito-hawk (a beautiful brown moth mottled like a pheasant), that had settled on the page, should think proper to take flight. He had lately come from a parade, as was evidenced by his regimental leather breeches and laced red waistcoat; but a chintz dressing-gown and a pair of yellow Moorish slippers softened down the warlike tone of these garments to one more congenial with his peaceable and festive pursuits. Presently the garden door opened, and a well-known step ascended to the verandah. Frank Owen, dressed in a cool Spanish costume, advanced, and, stopping three paces from the Major, took off his tufted sombrero and made a low bow.

"You are the picture, my dear sir," he said, "of serene enjoyment slightly tinged with sensuality. But how long, may I ask, have you taken to breakfasting on spiders?"--pointing, as he took a chair opposite the Major, at an immense red-spotted one that had dropt from the ceiling on the morsel my grandfather was in the act of conveying to his mouth.

The Major tenderly removed the insect by a leg.

"'Tis the worst of these al-fresco meals, Frank," said he. "Yesterday I cut a green lizard in two that had got on my plate, mistaking him for a bit of salad--being, as usual, more intent on my book than my food--and had very near swallowed the tail-half of the unfortunate animal."

"There are worse things than lizards in the world," quoth Garry.

"Ants, I should say, were certainly less wholesome"--and he directed the Major's attention to a long black line of those interesting creatures issuing from a hole in the pavement, pa.s.sing in an unbroken series up my ancestor's left leg, the foot of which rested on the ground, then traversing the cloth, and terminating at the loaf, the object of their expedition.

"Bless me," said the Major, as he rose and shook his breeches gently free from the marauders, "I must be more careful, or I shall chance to do myself a mischief. But they're worse at night. I've been obliged to leave off reading here in the evenings, for it went to my heart to see the moths scorching their pretty gauzy wings in the candle till the wicks were half-choked with them."

"Do you know, Major," said Owen, gravely, "that either this insect diet, or the sedentary life you lead, is making you quite fat, and utterly destroying the symmetry of your figure? In another week there will be one unbroken line of rotundity from your chin to your knees."

My grandfather glanced downward at his waistcoat. "No, my boy, no,"

said he; "if there had been any difference, I should have known it by my clothes. I don't think I've gained a pound this twelvemonth."

"More than a stone," quoth Garry. "We all remarked it on parade to-day--and remarked it with sorrow. Now, look you, a sea voyage is the very thing to restore your true proportions, and I propose that we shall take a short one together."

"A sea voyage!" quoth my grandfather; "the boy is mad! Not if all the wonders seen by Sinbad the Sailor lay within a day's sail. Did I not suffer enough coming here from England? I don't think," said my grandfather with considerable pathos, "that my digestion has ever been quite right to this day."

"'Sick of a calm,' eh?--Like your friend Mistress Tearsheet," said the youngster. "But I've settled it all, and count on you. Look here," he continued, drawing from his pocket a large printed bill, and unfolding it before my ancestor. At the top appeared in large capitals the words, "Plaza de Toros;" and underneath was a woodcut representing a bull, gazing, with his tail in the air, and an approving smile on his countenance, on the matadore about to transfix him. Then followed a glowing account in Spanish of the delights of a great bull-fight shortly to take place at Cadiz, setting forth the ferocity of the bulls, the number of horses that might be expected to die in the arena, and the fame of the picadores and espadas who were then and there to exhibit.

The Major shook his head--the captivating prospectus had no charms for him: he had not, as I have before said, an inquiring mind, and habit was so strong in him, that a change was like the dislocation of a joint. The Ensign proceeded to paint the delights of the excursion in the brightest colours he could command. They were to go to Cadiz in a boat which he had lately bought; she was a capital sailer--there was a half-deck forward, under which the Major might sleep as comfortably as in his own bed--a cooking apparatus (and here, as he expatiated on the grills and stews and devils that were to be cooked and eaten, with the additional stimulus to appet.i.te afforded by sea air, there was a spark of relenting in my grandfather's eye). "You shall return," said the tempter, "with a digestion so completely renovated, that my name shall rise to your tongue at each meal as a grace before meat, and a thanksgiving after it; and as to sea-sickness, why, this Levanter will take us there in twelve hours, so smoothly that you may balance a straw upon your nose the whole way." Finally, the cunning Ensign laid before him an application for leave already made out, and only awaiting his signature.

My grandfather made some feeble objections, which Owen pooh-poohed in his usual off-hand fas.h.i.+on. There was no standing against the youngster's strong will, and at five o'clock that same evening the Major found himself proceeding through the town towards the Waterport for embarkation, by no means fully reconciled to the abandonment of his beloved Lares. My luckless grandfather! did no presentiment warn you of a consequence then hanging in the clouds, that was to change utterly for you the untroubled aspect of those household G.o.ds?

Owen had attired himself for the trip in a half-nautical costume--a s.h.i.+rt of light-blue flannel, fastened at the collar with a smart bandana, a blue jacket, loose duck trousers, and a montero cap, which costume became the puppy well enough. He seemed of this opinion himself, as he walked gaily along beside the Major: so did the black-eyed occupants of many houses on each side, who peeped forth smilingly from behind their green lattices, sometimes nodding, and kissing their hands--for the Ensign had an incredible acquaintance with the budding and full-blown portion of the population of Gibraltar. The Major had stuck to his buckskins, (which stuck to him in return), over which he had drawn a pair of jack-boots, and wore his red-laced coat and regimental hat--for in those days that pa.s.sion for mufti, now so prevalent in the army, did not exist. Whenever he caught sight of any of the greetings bestowed from the windows, he would take off his laced hat, and, fixing his eyes on the t.i.ttering senorita, who generally let fall the lattice with a slam, would make her a low bow--and, after each of these acts of courtesy, my grandfather walked on more elated than before.

They pa.s.sed the drawbridge at Waterport, and, struggling through the crowd of Turks, Jews, infidels, and heretics, who usually throng the quay, entered a sh.o.r.e-boat that was to row them out to where Owen's vessel--the _Fair Unknown_, as he had christened her, in memory of his unforgotten partner at the Carnival ball--lay moored. In her they found a sailor who was to accompany them on their voyage--a noted contrabandista, called Francisco, whose friends.h.i.+p Owen had lately acquired, and who acted as his lieutenant on his marine excursions.

The boat was a neat affair--a small cutter, smartly painted, well found, and capable of holding several persons comfortably; and Francisco was a ruddy, portly, dark-skinned, large-whiskered son of the sea, the picture of good-humour. My grandfather stept in, in his jack-boots. There was much settling of carpet-bags and stowing of provisions in the lockers, and then they hoisted sail, and glided smoothly out from among the s.h.i.+pping into the bay.

The breeze was light and fair, and they went on, as Frank had promised, pleasantly enough. My grandfather for the first time surveyed the scene of his two years' residence from the sea. The grey old rock looked mellow in the evening light, as an elderly gentleman over his wine--the window-panes glanced ruddily, the walls gleamed whitely, and the trees were tinted with a yellower green; behind, in the eastern sky, floated one single purple cloud. As the objects became confused in the distance, the sharp rugged outline of the rock a.s.sumed the appearance that has caused the Spaniards to call it El Cuerpo--the appearance of a vast human body laid out on its back, and covered with a winding-sheet, like a dead t.i.tan on his funeral pile--the head towards Spain, the chest arched at Middle Hill, the legs rising gently upward to the knees at O'Hara's Tower, and then sloping down till the feet rest on Europa. The sun went down as they rounded Cabrita Point, and the breeze, freshening, took them swiftly along under the huge hills that rise abruptly upward from the Spanish coast. Then Francisco, lighting a charcoal fire, placed thereon, in a frying-pan, tender steaks thickly strewn with sliced tomatas and onions, from whence arose a steam that brought tears of grat.i.tude and delight into my grandfather's eyes. He anxiously watched the cooking--even threw out slight suggestions, such as another pinch of pepper, an additional onion, a slight dash of cayenne, and the like; and then, settling a plate firmly on the knees of his jack-boots, with a piece of bread and a cup by his side, and a knife and fork pointing upwards in his hands like lightning-conductors, gazed cheerfully around him. And when Francisco, rising from his knees, where he had been blowing the charcoal fire, removed the hissing pan towards my grandfather's plate, transferring to it a liberal portion of the contents, the good man, gazing on the white and red streaks of vegetable relieved by the brown background of steak, and the whole picture swimming in a juicy atmosphere of gravy, felt sentiments of positive friends.h.i.+p towards that lawless individual, and, filling a b.u.mper of Xerez, drank success to the voyage.

Three times was my grandfather's plate replenished from the thrice-filled pan. Afterwards he dallied a little with a cold pie, followed by a bit of cheese for digestion. Then, folding his hands across his stomach, he expressed his sincere opinion, that he had never tasted anything so good as that steak; and when Owen placed in his hand a smoking can of grog, he looked on the young man with a truly paternal eye. He talked complacently and benevolently, as men do who have dined well--praised the weather, the boat, the scene--and wondered where a man was going who rode slowly along a mountain-path above them, within hail, following him, in imagination, to his home, in a sort of dreamy contentment. After a second can he began to grow drowsy, and, just aware that Owen said the breeze was still freshening, retired to the soft mattress spread for him under the half-deck, and replacing his c.o.c.ked-hat by a red nightcap, slept till morning.

It was broad daylight when he woke, conscious that for an hour or two past he had been sleeping most uneasily. There was a violent swinging motion, a rus.h.i.+ng of wind and of water, that confused him extremely; and, forgetting where he was, he nearly fractured his skull by rising suddenly into a sitting posture. Steadying himself on his hands, in the posture of the Dying Gladiator, he slewed himself round on the pivot of his stern, and protruded his powdered head, like an old beaver, out of his hole. Owen and Francisco were sitting in a pool of water, trying to shelter themselves under the weather-side of the boat--dripping wet, and breakfasting on cold potatoes and fragments of meat left from last night's meal. My grandfather did not like the appearance of things at all. Rent in twain by horrible qualms, he inquired feebly of Owen if they were near Cadiz? Frank, in reply, shook his head, and said they were at anchor. Then my grandfather, making a vigorous effort, emerged completely from his place of repose, and, rising to his feet, looked over the gunwale. The scene he beheld was in dreary contrast to that of the evening before. Ridges of white foam were all around--ahead was a long low line of sandy coast, terminating in a point of rock whereon stood a lighthouse; and to leeward the bay was enclosed by steep hills. Over the low coast-line the wind blew with steady violence. A bright sun rather increased the dreariness of the prospect, which was suddenly closed to my grandfather by a shower of spray, that blinded him, and drenched him to the skin, converting his jack-boots into buckets. The wind had increased to a gale during the night, and they had been forced to take precarious shelter in the harbour of Tarifa. The Major did not venture on a second peep, but sat, dismally wet and sea-sick, the whole morning, trying to shelter himself as he best could. Once, a man came down to the beach, and gesticulated like a scaramouch, screaming also at the same time; but what his gestures and screams signified n.o.body on board could tell. At length, as the gale did not moderate, while their position increased in discomfort, and was also becoming precarious (for one of their anchors was gone, and great fears were entertained for the other), Owen and Francisco decided to weigh, and stand in for the sh.o.r.e, trusting to the smuggler's seamans.h.i.+p for a safe run. The Major, in spite of his sickness, stood up and pulled gallantly at the cable, the wind blowing his pigtail and skirts perpendicularly out from his person. "Heaf!" screamed Francisco from the bows; "Heave!" echoed Owen; and as the words flew past him on the gale, my grandfather's exertions were prodigious. At last, after tremendous tugging, the anchor came up. The jib was hoisted with a reef in it, Owen holding the sheet, while the smuggler ran aft and took the helm. They bent over to the gale, till the Major stood almost perpendicularly on the lee gunwale, with his back against the weather-side, and ran in till he thought they were going to b.u.mp ash.o.r.e; then tacking, they stood up along the coast, close to the wind, till Francisco gave the word. Owen let go the sheet, and the jib fluttered loosely out as they ran through a narrow pa.s.sage into smooth water behind the sea-wall, and made fast to a flight of steps.

Presently some functionary appertaining to the harbour appeared, and with him an emissary from the Governor of the place, who, aware of their plight, had civilly sent to offer a.s.sistance. The messenger was the same man who had made signals to them from the beach in the morning; and he seemed to think it advisable that they should wait on the Governor in person, saying that he was always disposed to be civil to British officers. This advice they resolved to act upon at once, before it should grow dark, foreseeing that, in case of their detention from bad weather in Tarifa, the Governor might prove a potent auxiliary. The Major would have wished to make some little alterations in his toilette, after his late disasters; but, after trying in vain to pull off his jack-boots, which clung to him like his skin, he was obliged to abandon the idea, and contented himself with standing on his head to let the water run out of them. As they advanced along the causeway leading to the town (the point where they landed is connected with the town by a long narrow sandy isthmus), the gale swept over them volumes of sand, which, sticking on my grandfather's wet uniform, gave him somewhat the appearance of a brick-wall partially rough-cast. His beard was of two days'

growth--his hair-powder was converted into green paste by the sea-water--and his whole appearance was travel-stained and deplorable.

Nevertheless his dignity by no means forsook him as they traversed the narrow alleys of the ancient town of Tarifa on their way to the approaching interview.

His excellency Don Pablo Dotto, a wonderfully fat little man, received them very courteously. He was a Spaniard of the old school, and returned the stately greeting of my grandfather, and the easy one of the Ensign, with such a profusion of bows, that for the s.p.a.ce of a minute they saw little more of his person than the s.h.i.+ning baldness on the top of his head. Then they were presented to his wife, a good-natured, motherly sort of old lady, who seemed to compa.s.sionate them much. But, while Owen was explaining to her the object of their trip, and its disastrous interruption, he suddenly stopped, open-mouthed, and blus.h.i.+ng violently, with his gaze directed towards the open door of a neighbouring apartment. There he beheld advancing towards him, the Beauty of the Carnival ball.

The Governor's lady named her as "her daughter, the Senorita Juana."

Spite of the different dress and circ.u.mstances, she too recognised Frank, and coloured slightly as she came forward to receive his greeting. The Ensign, an impudent scamp enough in general, was, however, the more confused of the two; and his embarra.s.sed salutation was entirely thrown into the shade by the magnificence of my grandfather's bow. However, he presently recovered his a.s.surance, and explained to the elder lady how he had previously enjoyed the pleasure (with a great stress upon the word) of making her daughter's acquaintance. Then he recounted to Juana the manner in which they had been driven in here, when on their way to Cadiz to see the bull-fight.

"We also are going to ride thither to-morrow," said the Senorita, softly.

"Ah, then, we shall meet there," said Frank, who presently after was seized with a fit of absence, and made incoherent replies. He was considering how they might travel together, and had almost resolved to offer to take the whole family to Cadiz in his boat--a proposal that would probably have somewhat astonished the little Governor, especially if he had seen the dimensions of the craft thus destined to accommodate himself and retinue. But Garry was an adept in manoeuvring, and marched skilfully upon the point he had in view. He drew such a pathetic picture of the hards.h.i.+ps they had endured on the voyage--their probable detention here for most of their short leave--their friendless condition, and their desire to see something of the country--that the little Governor was in a manner impelled (fancying all the time that the impulse sprung altogether from his own native benevolence) to desire that the two forlorn Englishmen would travel to Cadiz under his escort. So it being settled entirely to Garry's satisfaction that they were to start next morning at break of day on horseback--an arrangement which my grandfather's total ignorance of Spanish prevented him from knowing anything about--they retired to the princ.i.p.al fonda, where the Major speedily forgot, over a tolerable dinner, the toils and perils of the voyage.

CHAPTER II.

Daybreak the next morning found them issuing forth from the ancient city of Tarifa on a couple of respectable-looking hacks, hired from the innkeeper. Frank had, with his accustomed generals.h.i.+p, managed to secure a position at the off-rein of the Senorita Juana, who was mounted on a beautiful little white barb. Under her side-saddle, of green velvet studded with gilt nails, was a Moorish saddle-cloth, striped with vivid red and white, and fringed deeply. From the throat-lash of the bridle hung a long ta.s.sel, as an artificial auxiliary to the barb's tail in the task of keeping the flies off, further a.s.sisted by a tuft of white horse-hair attached to the b.u.t.t of her whip. She wore a looped hat and white plume, a riding-skirt, and an embroidered jacket of blue cloth, fastened, as was the wrought bosom of her chemise, with small gold b.u.t.tons. Frank could not keep his eyes off her, now riding off to the further side of the road to take in at once the whole of the beauteous vision, now coming close up to study it in its delightful details.

In front of the pair rode the little Governor, side by side with a Spaniard of about thirty, the long-betrothed lover of Juana--so long, in fact, that he did not trouble himself to secure his authority in a territory so undeniably his own, but smoked his cigar as coolly as if there were no good-looking Englishman within fifty miles of his mistress. He wore garments of the Spanish cut, made of nankeen--the jacket frogged with silver cords, tagged with little silver x.x.xX fishes--the latter appended, perhaps, as suitable companions to the frogs. A hundred yards ahead was an escort of four horse-soldiers with carbines on their thighs, their steel accoutrements flas.h.i.+ng ruddily in the level sunlight. Behind Frank came Major Flinders, clean shaved, and with jack-boots and regimental coat restored to something like their pristine splendour: by his side rode another lady, the Senorita Carlota, Juana's aunt, somewhere about thirty years old, plump and merry, her upper lip fringed at the corners with a line of dark down, quite decided enough for a cornet of eighteen to be proud of--a feminine embellishment too common for remark in these southern regions, and, in the opinion of some connoisseurs, rather enhancing the beauty of the fair wearers. She talked incessantly, at first, to my grandfather, who did not understand a word she said, but whose native politeness prompted him to say, "Si, Senorita," to everything--sometimes laying at the same moment his hand on his heart, and bowing with considerable grace. Behind this pair came another interesting couple--viz. two servants on mules, with great saddle-bags stuffed to extreme corpulence with provisions.

It was a glorious morning--a gentle breeze sweeping on their faces as they mounted the hills, but dying into silence in the deep valleys, fresh, and glistening with dew. Sometimes they rode along a rocky common, yellowed with a flowering shrub like furze--sometimes through unfenced fields--sometimes along broad plains, where patches of blossoming beans made the air rich with scent, and along which they galloped full speed, the Governor standing high in the stirrups of his demi-pique, the Senorita's white barb arching his neck till his muzzle touched his chest under the pressure of the long bit, and my grandfather prancing somewhat uneasily on his hard-mouthed Spanish entero, whose nose was, for the most part, projected horizontally in the air. The Major was not a first-rate seat--he rode with a long stirrup, his heel well down, his leg straight, and slanting a little forward, body upright, and elbows back, as may be seen in the plates to ancient works on equitation--a posture imposing enough, but not safe across country: galloping deranged it materially, for the steed was hard-mouthed, and required a long, strong pull, with the body back, and a good purchase on the stirrups. The animal had a most voracious appet.i.te, quite overcoming his sense of what was due to his rider; and, on seeing a tuft of juicy gra.s.s, down went his nose, drawing my grandfather, by means of the tight reins, well over the pummel. On these occasions, the Major, feeling resistance to be in vain, would sit looking easily about him, feigning to be absorbed in admiration of the prospect--which was all very well, where there was a prospect to look at, but wore a less plausible appearance when the animal paused in a hollow between two hedges, or ran his nose into a barn-door. But whenever this happened, Carlota, instead of half-smothering a laugh, as a mischievous English girl would, ten to one, have done, sat most patiently till the Major and his steed came to an understanding, and would greet him, as they moved on again, with a good-natured smile, that won her, each time, a higher place in his estimation.

Thus they proceeded till the sun rose high in the heavens, when, on reaching a grove on the edge of one of the plains, they halted under a huge cork-tree, near which ran a rivulet. The cavalcade dismounted--the horses were tethered, the mules disburthened of the saddle-bags, and the contents displayed under the tree; horse-cloths and cloaks were spread around on the ground, and a fire of dry sticks was lit on the edge of the stream with such marvellous celerity that, before my grandfather had time to take more than a hasty survey of the eatables, after seating himself on the root of a tree, a cup of steaming chocolate was placed in his hand.

"Confess, Major," said Garry, speaking with his mouth full of sausage, "that a man may lose some of the pleasures of existence by leading the life of a hermit. Don't you feel grateful to me for dragging you out of your cobweb to such a pleasant place as this?"