As I had no pecuniary interest in salt, wine, phosphate of soda, hides, or cork—the chief exports of Cadiz—I left the much-bombarded port on the Vinuesa, one of the boats of the Alcoy line plying to Malaga. My immediate destination was the Hock, but we went no nearer than Algeciras, the town on the opposite side of the bay, off which Saumarez gave such a stern account of the Spanish and French combined on the 12th of July, 1801. The sea was without a ripple. The bright coasts of two Continents were in view. On such a day as this the first adventurers must have crossed from Africa to Europe. Hero might almost have swum across. Even Mr. Brownsmith of Eastchepe might rig a craft out of an empty sugar hogshead, set up his walking-stick for mast, tie his pocket-handkerchief to it for sail, and trust to the waves in safety—that is, if Mr. Brownsmith of Eastchepe had in him the heart of Raleigh, not of Bumble. Some men are born to be drivers of tram-cars, some to be captains of corsairs. The pioneer of navigation must have been cut out by nature to be a High-Admiral of bold buccaneers.
We were only five passengers on the steamer, and we amused ourselves comparing notes. One told of a voyage from Barcelona to Alicante which he had once undertaken. The first night out they lost a sailor; he was seized with a fit and died; and then came the poser. When they would arrive at Alicante and muster the crew for the inspection of the health officers one would be wanting; suspicions would be aroused that he had fallen a victim to contagious disease, and they ran the hazard of being stuck into quarantine unless they could succeed in buying themselves off with an exorbitant bribe. While they were in a quandary, a white head popped above a gangway forward and a voice sang out:
"I'll get you out of the hole for a consideration."
"Who the deuce are you? Where did you spring from?" cried the skipper.
"A stowaway,—a flour-barrel. I'll parade as the dead man's substitute for ten dollars and a square meal."
In the end they were glad to accept the impudent proposal; the corpse was flung overboard, and the stowaway entered the port of Alicante an honest British tar, looking the whole world in the face like Longfellow's village blacksmith, and jingling ten dollars in his pocket.
We passed by Barrosa, where Graham gave the French such a thrashing in 1811, and the 87th Irish Fusiliers earned their glorious surname of the "Eagle-takers;" and over the waves of Trafalgar where Nelson did his duty, and was smitten with a bullet in the spine; and passing into the Straits and rounding the point by Tarifa, stood in for the Bay of Gibraltar. A spacious swelling spread of live water it is, and safe, except, as one of my fellow-passengers informed me, for a rock off the Punta del Carnero, or Mutton Point. The rock is covered when the tide is high (for there is a tide here), but rears its tortoise-like back over the surface for some hours at the ebb. The Channel squadron was coming out of Gib some years before when an ironclad grounded on this rock, but was got off without more damage than a scraping. As the danger to the navigation was outside the limits of the fortress, the British authorities applied to the Spanish for permission to clear away the obstruction. It was easily to be accomplished. A party of sappers could set a caisson round it, bore a gallery, insert a charge, and blast the rock into smithereens with safety and despatch. But the Spaniards would not consent to such an interference with the designs of Providence; the poor fishermen on the coast were often dependent for their livelihood on what they could pick up from wrecks, and if this rock were removed Nature would be sacrilegiously altered, and the interesting wreckers deprived of many an honest coin. I tell the tale as it was told to me. I wonder should it be dedicated to the amphibious corps.
Another story bearing on the successful revolution inaugurated by Prim is worth relating, as it deals with an episode of Spanish politics which is repeated almost every other year with slender variations. The play is the same; the scene and the dramatis personæ are merely shifted. One of the stereotyped military risings was to be initiated at Algeciras on the arrival of Prim from England. The intimation that he was at hand was to be made by the firing of two rockets from the ship which carried him. On a certain night at the close of August, 1868, two rockets blazed in the sky, and were noticed by the impatient conspirators at Algeciras, who flew to arms to cries of "Down with the Queen," and "Live Prim and Liberty." But no Prim landed. The alarm was premature, the rising a flash in the pan. What they had taken for the bright herald of the advent of "El Paladino" was the signal of a Peninsular and Oriental steamer which had arrived on her passage to Port Said. For the sake of appearances, a number of unfortunate fools were set up against a wall and had their brains blown out in tribute to law and order. But the fruit was ripening. Within little more than a fortnight came the insurrection of the fleet at Cadiz, upon the appearance in that port of the popular hero, and before the end of the month Queen Isabella had fled over the French frontier, never to return to Spain as a sovereign. Prim's plot was attended with a fortune in excess of his most sanguine hopes; he entered Madrid in triumph in October, and was created a Marshal in November. All was joy and enthusiasm, but the hapless tools of ambition who had helped to prepare the way for him below in Algeciras were not of the jubilee.
At first sight the rock looms up large like a frowning inhospitable islet, the stretch of the Neutral Ground being so low that one cannot detect it above the sea-level until almost right upon it. We left the Vinuesa and entered a boat with a couple of sturdy rowers, who offered to pull us across the Bay for five dollars. As I dipped a hand in the brine one of them raised a cry of "Take care!" there were "mala pesca" there. Mr. Shark, who is an ugly customer, had been cruising in the neighbourhood, and had taken a morsel out of an American swimmer a little time before. There were three masts protruding over the water at one spot, the relics of some gallant ship, and index to one of those godsends which the Spanish Government is solicitous to guarantee to the distressed and deserving local fishermen. What a pity it was not the Murillo! That would have been poetic retribution.
No matter: with all thy faults I like thee, Spain, and especially that brown dusty province of Andalusia, with its oranges and pomegranates; its dancing fountains splashed with sunshine; its winsome damozels with such lisping languors of voice; its philosophic waiters upon the morrow, happy in a cigarette, a melon and a guitar; its muleteers crooning snatches of lazy song; its peasants with hair tied in beribboned pigtail; its tawny boys in Manola colours; aye, and its artistic beggars.