Indeed, if you should happen to be sauntering on the Alameda just at evening, as the sunset-gun is fired, and should look upward to see the smoke curling away, you might see above it a gathering of black clouds—the sure sign of the coming of the terrible East wind known as the "Levanter"; and if at the same moment the afterglow of the dying day should touch a group of soldiers standing on the mountain's crest (where colors could be clearly distinguished even if figures were confused), it might seem as if that last gleam under the shadow of the clouds were itself the red cross of England soaring against a dark and stormy sky.
This was the brilliant side of war: pity that there should be another side! But the next day, walking near the barracks, I met a company with reversed arms bearing the body of a comrade to the grave. There was no funeral pomp, no waving plumes nor roll of muffled drums: for it was only a common soldier, who might have fallen on any field, and be buried where he fell, with not a stone to mark his resting-place. But for all that, he may have been a true hero; for it is such as he, the unknown brave, who have fought all the battles and gained all the victories of the world.
Turning from this scene, I thought how hard was the fate of the English soldier: to be an exile from the land of his birth, "a man without a country"; who may be ordered to any part of the world (for such is the stern necessity, if men are to defend "an Empire on which the sun never sets"); serving in many lands, yet with a home in none; to sleep at last in a nameless grave! Such has been the fate of many of that gallant regiment which I saw marching so proudly yesterday. Their next campaign may be in Central Asia, fighting the Russians in Afghanistan, amid the snows of the Himalayas. If so, I fear it may be said of them with sad, prophetic truth, as they go into battle:
"Ah! few shall part where many meet;
The snow shall be their winding-sheet;
And every turf beneath their feet
Shall be a soldier's sepulchre."
CHAPTER VI.
SOCIETY IN GIBRALTAR.
The best thing that I find in any place is the men that are in it. Strong walls and high towers are grand, but after a while they oppress me by their very massiveness, unless animated by a living presence. Even the great guns, those huge monsters that frown over the ramparts, would lose their majesty and terror, if there were not brave men behind them. And so, after I had surveyed Gibraltar from every point of land and sea; after I had been round about it, and marked well its towers and its bulwarks; to complete the enjoyment I had but one wish—to sit down in some quiet nook and talk it all over.
There is no man in the world whom I respect more than an old soldier. He is the embodiment of courage and of all manly qualities, and he has given his life to his country. And if he bears in his person the scars of honorable wounds, I look up to him with a feeling of veneration. Of such characters no place has more than Gibraltar, which perhaps may be considered the centre of the military life of England. True, the movements of the Army are directed by orders from the Horse Guards in London. But here the military feature is the predominant, if not the exclusive, one; while in London a few thousand troops would be lost in a city of five millions of inhabitants. Here the outward and visible sign is ever before you: regiments whose names are historical, are always coming and going; and if you are interested in the history of modern wars, (as who can fail to be, since it is a part of the history of our times?) you may not only read about them in the Garrison Library, but see the very men that have fought in them. Here is a column coming up the street! I look at its colors, and read the name of a regiment already familiar through the English papers; that has shown the national pluck and endurance in penetrating an African forest or an Indian jungle, or in climbing the Khyber Pass in the Himalayas to settle accounts with the Emir of Cabul. There must be strange meetings of old comrades here, as well as new companionships formed between those who have fought under the same royal standard, though in different parts of the world. A regiment recalled from Halifax is quartered near another just returned from Natal or the Cape of Good Hope; while troops from Hong Kong, or that have been up the Irrawaddi to take part in the late war in Upper Burmah, can exchange experiences with their brother soldiers from the other side of the globe. Almost all the regiments collected here have figured in distant campaigns, and the officers that ride at their head are the very ones that led them to victory. To a heart that is not so dead but that it can still be stirred by deeds of daring, there is nothing more thrilling than to sit under the guns of the greatest fortress in the world, and listen to the story as it comes from the lips of those who were actors in the scenes.