When he was breast deep, he let his uniform cloak slip off his shoulders; allowed his shoes to sink to the bottom, and his three-cornered hat to float away. The doctor had advised him to do this.
"If you leave the things at the edge of the water, Bob, it will be thought that somebody has deserted; and then there will be a lot of questions, and inquiries. You had better take them well out into the sea with you, and then let them go. They will sink, and drift along under water and, if they are ever thrown up, it will be far beyond our lines. In that way, as the whole of the guard will answer to their names, when the roll is called tomorrow, no one will ever give a thought to the drummer who fell in at the last moment; or, if one of them does think of it, he will suppose that the captain sent him into the town, with a report."
The bag would have been a great encumbrance, had Bob wanted to swim fast. As it was, he simply placed his hands upon it, and struck out with his feet, making straight out from the shore. This he did for some ten minutes; and then, being certain that he was far beyond the sight of anyone on shore, he turned and, as nearly as he could, followed the line of the coast. The voices of the sentries calling to each other came across the sea, and he could make out a light or two in the great fort at the water's edge.
It was easy work. The water was, as nearly as possible, the temperature of his body; and he felt that he could remain for any time in it, without inconvenience. The lights in the fort served as a mark by which he could note his progress; and an hour after starting he was well abreast of them, and knew that the current must be helping him more than he had expected it would do.
Another hour, and he began to swim shorewards; as the current might, for aught he knew, be drifting him somewhat out into the bay. When he was able to make out the dark line ahead of him, he again resumed his former course. It was just eight o'clock when the guard had passed through the gate. He had started half an hour later. He swam what seemed to him a very long time, but he had no means of telling how the time passed.
When he thought it must be somewhere about twelve o'clock, he made for the shore. He was sure that, by this time, he must be at least three miles beyond the fort; and as the Spanish camps lay principally near San Roque, at the head of the bay, and there were no tents anywhere by the seashore, he felt sure that he could land, now, without the slightest danger.
Here, then, he waded ashore, stripped, tied his clothes in a bundle, waded a short distance back again, and dropped them in the sea. Then he returned, took up the bag, and carried it up the sandy beach. Opening it, he dressed himself in the complete set of clothes he had brought with him, put on the Spanish shoes and round turned-up hat, placed his money in his pocket; scraped a shallow hole in the sand, put the bag in it and covered it, and then started walking briskly along on the flat ground beyond the sand hills He kept on until he saw the first faint light in the sky; then he sat down among some bushes, until it was light enough for him to distinguish the features of the country.
Inland, the ground rose rapidly into hills--in many places covered with wood--and half an hour's walking took him to one of these. Looking back, he could see the Rock rising, as he judged, from twelve to fourteen miles away. He soon found a place with some thick undergrowth and, entering this, lay down and was soon sound asleep.
When he woke it was already late in the afternoon. He had brought with him, in the bag, some biscuits and hardboiled eggs; and of a portion of these he made a hearty meal. Then he pushed up over the hill until, after an hour's walking, he saw a road before him. This was all he wanted, and he sat down and waited until it became dark. A battalion of infantry passed along as he sat there, marching towards Gibraltar. Two or three long lines of laden carts passed by, in the same direction.
He had consulted a map before starting, and knew that the distance to Malaga was more than twenty leagues; and that the first place of any importance was Estepona, about eight leagues from Gibraltar, and that before the siege a large proportion of the supplies of fruit and vegetables were brought to Gibraltar from this town. Starting as soon as it became dark, he passed through Estepona at about ten o'clock; looked in at a wine shop, and sat down to a pint of wine and some bread; and then continued his journey until, taking it quietly, he was in sight of Marbella.