"Some one has evidently been killed or wounded desperately," said I, handing the glass to Slingsby.
"Good Heaven! do you say so?" cried Jack; "well, it would seem so—poor fellow—you know, Ramble, I did not exactly anticipate such a thing—so it is—so it is! There is a man stretched on the deck!" he added, passing the telescope to our soldiers.
"We have only obeyed a standing garrison order," said I; "and the responsibility thereof, if any, does not lie with us, but with those who issued it. Come back to the guard-room, Jack, and my servant shall go to the messman for that bottle of champagne you have won so well."
"Oh! deuce take the champagne, and all that sort of thing," said Jack, looking still at the guarda costa.
For a time an evident confusion and indecision, seemed to reign among her crew. She lay heaving and tossing, rising and falling on the long and ridgy rollers, with the setting sun glaring full upon her white mainsail, which lay flat to the mast; the light of day soon sank in the west, behind the upper peak of the rocky mountain, from which a myriad rays shot upward and played on the masses of floating cloud; the strait was still bathed in the amber glory of evening, and each glassy billow of the slow ground-swell as it rolled away from west to east, rose like a bank of gold from a plain of brilliant blue; and all the amphitheatre of the town, which stretches along the base of the rock, and rises gradually from the shore in the most delightful manner—mingling in picturesque confusion, the lofty and airy Spanish caza, with its flat roof, verandah, and sun-shaded windows, the close, compact English house, the solid rampart, and the flimsy wooden storehouse—all were bathed in the warmest tints, and every casement and window flung back the gleams of radiance, as if they had been illuminated by lamps of crimson and gold.
Soon after the departed sun had shed its last ray on the bare scalp of the sugar-loaf, the crew of the guarda costa, as a protection probably, hoisted British colours, and crept past us into the harbour, and immediately on dropping her anchor, sent a boat ashore.
We supposed that this visit could only be for the purpose of lodging a complaint against the officer in command at the New Mole Fort—to wit myself, a complaint which we knew would be unavailing: but we were mistaken; for my servant, on returning from the barracks with the bottle of champagne and other &c. requisite to enable Jack and me to pass the night on guard agreeably, brought us the unpleasant information that the shot had carried away both legs of the unfortunate Spanish lieutenant who commanded the guarda costa, and that doctor M'Leechy of "Ours" had at once gone off to the vessel to succour the patient, who—poor fellow!—had died under his hands.
This catastrophe proved a great damper to us, and to Jack in particular, for he was one of the best-hearted fellows in the service; so we had more champagne brought from the mess-house, and we talked of the guarda costa and her poor lieutenant almost till the morning gun was fired; and the affair furnished me with a special paragraph for that "column of remarks" in the guard report which seldom contains memoranda of greater importance than a notice of "the cracked pane of glass, handed over by Captain O'Brien of the 88th;" or, "the poker, handed over, broken, by the last guard under Lieutenant Smith, of the Buffs," and so forth.
In the morning we found that the guarda costa had sailed in the night, taking her dead commander with her; and long before the end of the week we had ceased even to speak of the circumstance at mess, and I forgot the affair as the image of Paulina came before me again, and thoughtless Jack Slingsby was as gay as ever.
But I must mention, that on being relieved from guard at the New Mole Fort, I found waiting me, at my quarters, Pedro de Urquija, a well-known contrabandista, and king of the smugglers of Gibraltar, who gave me a profusion of thanks "for saving his little felucca, La Buena Fortuna, from that devil of a guarda costa," saying it was the closest run he had ever experienced in twenty years of arduous smuggling; and he insisted upon my acceptance of several boxes of prime Cubas and some dozen yards of magnificent lace, worked by the nuns of Cadiz and the poor sisters of Santa Theresa at Estrelo, and we parted the best friends in the world: but a heavy rod was in pickle for Jack and me; and the affair was destined to cost us more danger, trouble, and anxiety, than we could ever have calculated on risking.