The solitary artilleryman, who was attached to my guard, appeared in an instant with his sword by his side, and a lintstock in his hand.
"Get ready a gun," said I; "for there is a Spanish guarda costa in pursuit of a smuggler, and we must protect our friend."
"An 18-pounder, or a 24, sir?"
"Oh, give him a twenty-four, and take a file of the guard to assist you."
While the smuggler, with her long sweeps out, and every stitch of canvas crowded on her long and tapering masts and whip-like yards, was straining every nerve to escape from the Spanish cruiser, which plied away with her bow guns, and bore after her close-hauled, and rushing through the shining waves till they seemed to smoke under her, it may be necessary to inform the reader that the manufacture and smuggling of tobacco and cigars at Gibraltar is a never-failing and never-ending source of angry discussion between the Governments of Spain and Britain; for, by the former, tobacco has long been reckoned a royal monopoly. Now, in Gibraltar, almost every second house is a cigar-shop, and more than two thousand men are daily employed in the manufacture of these articles of luxury, without which a Spaniard would be, as some one says. like a steamer without a funnel. Three-fourths of the British exports from Gibraltar to the three United Kingdoms are also smuggled, and to such an extent is the contraband trade carried, that the annual importation of tobacco into that fortified town, says Mr Porter, in his "Progress of the Nation," "amounts to from six millions to eight millions of pounds, nearly the whole of which is purchased by smugglers."
The boats of the contrabandistas are generally rigged as feluccas, and painted black; they are built sharp as a pike-head, and carry a heavy brass gun, which, in harbour, is usually concealed under a pile of old boxes and casks, with a tarpaulin thrown over it, while in cases of emergency, various pistols, pikes, and cutlasses, make their appearance in the hands of the brown-visaged, black-bearded, red-sashed, and rather pictorial-looking ruffians, whose chief occupation is to sleep and lounge about their decks by day.
To look out for these lads of the knife and pistol, the Government of Her Most Catholic Majesty maintains a number of fast-sailing revenue craft, called guarda costas, commanded by brave and vigilant officers. These are the abhorrence of the contrabandistas, whose operations are greatly facilitated on land by the concurrence of the corrupt Spanish officials; and those guarda costas, in their zeal, had, of late, been rash enough to pursue their prey into those waters which are under the jurisdiction of the Governor and Commander-in-Chief of Gibraltar; and in three instances had boarded them with pistol and cutlass, shot the crews, or driven them overboard, and thereafter cut the feluccas out from under the very guns of Her Britannic Majesty's fortress.
This, however, was not to be tolerated again, and strict orders had been issued that every guarda costa who ventured into troubled waters should be fired on. John Bull is consistently absurd and unjust in all things, and, with all his boasted justice, is the most veritable bully in the world—except, perhaps, his thriving son Jonathan; he would no doubt cut his own smugglers out of any port in the world, and in the same moment would deny the poor Spaniards the right to do the same; for John is a man full of honour and liberality, or a man of neither, just as may suit his own particular purpose for the time; but to return,—
On came the felucca in question, running straight for the anchorage, which was protected by the heavy guns of the New Mole Fort where we were on guard. and the parapet of which was lined by the soldiers, all eager to witness the result of that most exciting of all things, a chase—a struggle between a strong party and a weak one. On came the guarda costa in pursuit, plying her bow-chaser, cleaving asunder the clouds of white smoke which ever and anon it rolled ahead of her, and riding over the waves, then shining in all the rosy brilliance of a Spanish sunset, while astern waved the large ensign with the red and yellow horizontal bars of Castile and Leon.
Suddenly the little felucca ran up British colours; a sharp patter rang over the water, and a wreath of smoke rose from her stern as the devil-may-care contrabandistas gave the cruiser a dose of small arms.