“You seem to be the only waiter in the place,” we said; “how do you manage to attend upon everybody?”
He sighed a very long sigh.
“Yes, it’s awful work,” he said, in his queer Gibraltar English, “since the Quarantine regulation keeps everybody out of Gib. I am ready to drop of fatigue now, and this has been going on for weeks. We don’t get to bed till midnight, and we are up at four or five o’clock in the morning, and sleep just anywhere. The Quarantine is worse than the cholera, ten times.”
“You are English?” I asked, a little cautiously.
“The Lord be praised, I am! Oh! the Spaniards are a bad set, I assure you; and don’t we pitch into ’em when we get a chance! It was not very long ago that we had a regular fight, six Englishmen against six Spaniards, all of us young men, and the Spaniards came off very shabbily. We killed one outright.”
“How shocking! but do you mean to say that the police don’t interfere?”
“That’s as it happens. The English have no business here in Algeciras, you know, and if the Spanish gendarmes disturbed themselves whenever knives are drawn, they’d have an uneasy time of it.”
He went on to tell us some more stories about the state of society in Algeciras, which we took cum grano salis, having no personal experience of it.
“Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?” was not applicable to the unfortunate people whom unhospitable Gib. had driven into Algeciras. We dined pretty well because we were not dainty; but so stringent were the Quarantine regulations, that such refreshing luxuries as lemonade, vegetables, and fresh fruits could not be had for love or money. Whatever we asked for, and we only asked for very simple things, “was at Gibraltar;” indeed, everything was at Gibraltar—except the fleas.
We went to bed early, having ordered horses and Spanish saddles at six o’clock next morning; but the fleas would let us have no sleep. There was no armour against them but Spanish patience. Glad indeed were we when morning came, and, after a hasty toilet and a cup of horrible coffee, we descended to the street, being informed that the horses were ready. The word ready does not however bear its English signification in Spain. If you have ordered a horse in England and you are told it is ready, you know that you have only to put on hat and gloves and mount. In Spain, it suffices for an animal to exist, or for a thing to be known to be somewhere, and they are both ready. We had made, perhaps, an unwise bargain, but the only one that seemed possible to make, in ordering horses of two proprietors, two of a very big Spaniard and one of a very small Englishman. Of course this led to all sorts of complications, but I must tell my story from the beginning. In the first place, on being told that the horses were ready, and not finding them on the spot, we sent a man to look after the lad who had gone to look after the little boy who had gone to look after the horses that the Spaniard and Englishman had promised to send, but didn’t. When the man had come back to say that the lad told him that the little boy told him that the men told him they were coming, we resigned ourselves for a little while, and, by-and-by, the men and the horses did indeed come. But then ensued an altercation as fierce as any detailed by Homer. It was like the fable of the big boy with the little coat, and the little boy with the big coat. The Englishman’s horse was small, but he had only a large saddle, and the Spaniard had only a small saddle for a very large horse. There was what is popularly called a “row,” and the inhabitants of Algeciras turned out like a swarm of bees to see and hear and take part in it. This commotion lasted nearly an hour, and not till two hours from the time of our descent into the street did we set off.