CHAPTER III.
JACK SLINGSBY.
The killing of the Spanish lieutenant revived among our diplomatic people the ever-rankling quarrel about the contrabandistas, and the captain-general of Andalusia wrote an angry letter to the governor of Gibraltar, remonstrating with him on the conduct of the officer in charge of the battery at the Mole Fort, in daring to fire upon a Spanish government cruiser, and requesting that the said Don Ricardo Ramble should be given up to the Spanish authorities to be sent to the galleys at Barcelona probably, or to be otherwise disposed of.
This absurd demand, however, the old general commanding waived politely; but the correspondence was prolonged until the military secretary became bored to death on the subject, and lost all patience at the very mention of it. Now as the Queen of Spain designates herself sovereign lady of Gibraltar, and as the alcalde of San Roque, a little town which has sprung up within the last hundred and fifty years, still styles himself in all official documents Alcalde of San Roque and of Gibraltar, and holder of supreme authority therein, the tone assumed by the capitan-general, who was on a visit to Jaen, was pompous, high, and mighty; for no explanation we could give in writing could make the irritable old Castilian hidalgo see that the lieutenant of the guarda costa had been in the wrong.
One evening, on entering the mess-room, I was startled by Colonel Morton acquainting me that by directions just arrived from the Foreign Secretary he had been requested to send the two officers who were on guard in the new Mole Fort into Spain.
"Without hostage or guarantee—the devil!" said I, shrugging my shoulders; "and to whom?"
"To this obstinate old bore by habit, and boar by nature, the captain-general."
"As prisoners, colonel?" cried Slingsby, with an astounded air from the other end of the table, and pausing with his hand on a wine decanter; "you don't mean to say as prisoners?"
"Prisoners—not at all; how could you think of such a thing?" said the colonel, laughing, for he was a hearty old soldier, at whose name stood P.W. and K.H., and C.B. in Hart's Army List; "you go merely to explain the late affair in person; and it is the more necessary for you both to go as the two aides-de-camp of the governor are on the sick list. It is only a ride of some seventy or eighty miles into Spain—wish 't were I who had the duty to do."
"And where does the captain-general live?"