This was but one of many heroic actions performed by men of the Royal Artillery. Another deserves mention, in which the greatest coolness and presence of mind were displayed. A gunner, named Hartley, was employed in the laboratory, filling shells with carcass composition and fixing fuzes. During the operation a fuze ignited, and "Although he was surrounded by unfixed fuzes, loaded shells, composition, &c., with the most astonishing coolness he carried out the lighted shell, and threw it where it could do little or no harm. Two seconds had scarcely elapsed, before it exploded. If the shell had burst in the laboratory, it is almost certain the whole would have been blown up—when the loss in fixed ammunition, fuzes, &c., would have been irreparable—exclusive of the damage which the fortifications would have suffered from the explosion, and the lives that might have been lost."[[27]]
Yet again. On New Year's Day, 1782, an officer of Artillery in Willis's Batteries, observing a shell about to fall near where he was standing, got behind a traverse for shelter. The shell struck this very traverse, and before bursting, half buried him with the earth loosened by the impact. One of the guard—named Martin—observing his officer's position, hurried, in spite of the risk to his own life when the shell should burst, and endeavoured to extricate him from the rubbish. Unable to do it by himself, he called for assistance, and another of the guard, equally regardless of personal danger, ran to him, and they had hardly succeeded in extricating their officer, when the shell burst and levelled the traverse with the ground.
This great siege of Calpe, the fourteenth to which the Rock had been subjected, divides itself into three epochs. First, the monotonous blockade, commencing in July, 1779; second, the bombardment which commenced in April, 1781; and third, the grand attack, on the 13th September, 1782.
The blockade was varied by occasional reliefs and reinforcements; and was accompanied by an incessant fire from the guns of the fortress on the Spanish works. The batteries most used at first were Willis's, so called (according to an old MS. of 1705, in the Royal Artillery Record Office), because the man who was most energetic, when these batteries were first armed, bore that name. When the attacks from the gunboats commenced, the batteries to the westward—the King's Bastions and others—were also employed. The steady fire kept up by the Artillery, its accuracy, and the improvements in it suggested by the experience of the siege, were themes of universal admiration; and the many ingenious devices, some of them copied by the enemy, by which, with the assistance of the Engineers, they masked, strengthened, and repaired their batteries, form a most interesting study for the modern Artilleryman. The incessant Artillery duel, which went on, made the gunners' nights as sleepless frequently as their days; for the hours of darkness had to be devoted to repairing the damages sustained during the day. Well may the celebrated chronicler of the siege talk of them as "our brave Artillery,"—brave in the sense of continuous endurance, not merely spasmodic effort.
At the siege of Belleisle, described in a former chapter, the failing ammunition of the enemy was indicated by the use of wooden and stone projectiles. The latter were used by the Royal Artillery at Gibraltar, but for a different reason. To check and distract the working-parties of the enemy, shell had been chiefly employed by the garrison; and the proficiency they attained in the use of these projectiles can easily be accounted for, when it is remembered how soon and how accurately every range could be ascertained; how eager the gunners were to make every shot tell; and how exceedingly important it was to check the continued advance of the enemy's works. For variety's sake, it would seem, for there was no need to economize shell at this time—in pure boyish love of change, the Artillerymen devised stone balls, perforated so as to admit of a small bursting-charge, and a short fuze; and it was found that the bursting of these projectiles over the Spanish working-parties caused them incredible annoyance.
Although the fire of the garrison during the first epoch of the siege was the most important consideration, and its value could hardly be overrated, as to it alone was any hope due of prolonging the defence until help should come from England,—it was not the only distinctive feature of this time. It was during the blockade that the garrison was most sorely tried by the scarcity of food. And in forming our estimate of the defence of Gibraltar, it should never be forgotten that the defenders were always the same—unrelieved, without communication with any back country; and with hardly any reinforcements to ease the heavy duties. The 97th Regiment, which arrived during the siege, was long in the garrison before it was permitted, or indeed was able, to take its share of duty; and the hard work, as well as the hard fare, fell upon the same individuals.
The statistics, given so curtly by Drinkwater, as to the famine in the place, enable us to realize the daily privations of the troops. At one time, scurvy had so reduced the effective strength of the garrison, that a shipload of lemons which arrived was a more valuable contingent than several regiments would have been. In reading the account of this, with all the quiet arguments as to the value of lemon-juice, and its effect upon the patients, one cannot but wish, that in every military operation there were artists like Drinkwater to fill in the details of those pictures, whose outlines may be drawn by military commanders, or by the logic of events, but whose canvas becomes doubly inviting through the agency of the other industrious and unobtrusive brush. Modern warlike operations suffer from an overabundance of description; but the skeleton supplied by official reports, and the frequent flabbiness of those rendered by newspaper correspondents, produce a result far inferior to the compact picture presented by a writer at once observant and professional.
In a table, at the end of Drinkwater's work, crowded out of the book, as if hardly worthy of mention, and yet most precious to the student now, we find some of the prices paid for articles of food during the siege. Fowls brought over a guinea a couple; beef as much as 4s. 10d. per pound; a goose, 30s.; best tea as high as 2l. 5s. 6d. per pound; eggs, as much as 4s. 10½d. per dozen; cheese, 4s. 1d. per pound; onions, 2s. 6d. per pound; a cabbage, 1s. 7½d.; a live pig, 9l. 14s. 9d.; and a sow in pig, over 29l.
The high price, at times, of all vegetables, was an index of the existence of that terrible scourge—scurvy.
Some very quaint sales took place. An English cow was sold during the blockade for fifty guineas, reserving to the sellers a pint of milk each day while she continued to give it; while another cow was purchased by a Jew for sixty guineas, but in so feeble a state, that she dropped down dead before she had been removed many hundred yards. The imagination fails in attempting to realize the purchaser's face—a Jew, and a Gibraltar Jew; but can readily conceive the laugh against him among the surrounding crowd, their haggard faces looking more ghastly as they smiled. Although Englishmen take their pleasure sadly, they also bear their troubles lightly. An English soldier must be reduced indeed, ere he fails to enjoy a joke at another man's expense, and this characteristic was not wanting at Gibraltar.