After luncheon we went to see the “Galleries.” Our Scorp convoyed us; Gunner Wilkinson, a lean old war dog, received us and led the way into a dim passage, with sanded floor and whitewashed roof, tunnelled out of the bowels of the Rock. The narrow gallery ascends at an easy slope, now and again widening out into a small chamber, as a Roman catacomb expands into the chapel of Christian martyr or saint. Only here, in this aerial catacomb, instead of the statue of a saint, stands a great gun, its black nozzle poking through a loophole. The Gunner explained the working, patting the gun as one pats a favorite horse. At the lightest touch the monster swung smoothly on its swivel, and the loophole was free for us to look out at the magnificent view. Below us was Gibraltar Bay, the cork woods of Algeciras, and the blue line of Sierras beyond. We were in no hurry to leave the gallery, as we should probably never be here again. Gunner Wilkinson refused a shilling, but accepted a cigar; and finally understanding that we really were interested in his wonderful Cyclopean galleries, he unbent and gossiped about them in a friendly way.
During the “Great Siege,” a non-commissioned officer, Sergeant Ince, heard the commandant, General Eliott, say that he would give a thousand dollars to be able to drop shells on the enemy from a certain point where the Rock’s face was a sheer precipice. The practical genius of the plain soldier found out the way. If there was no place for the guns on the Rock, make a place for them in the Rock. So the famous Rock Batteries, at Ince’s suggestion, were blasted out of the living cliffs. They had done great service in their day, but now, frankly, this cannon, that to me looked so deadly, was quite out of date. The real guns were mounted—elsewhere! Yes, La Vieja (the old dog) had a new set of teeth; she could bite now as well as bark. Beyond this the Gunner would say nothing of the modern defences, nor of those secret forbidden parts of “Gib” I longed to see. His talk was all of old wars, old heroes, of Ince, who rose from the ranks and was made an ensign of the Royal Garrison Battalion as a reward for his batteries. One day, when he was an aged man, riding to his work on an ancient nag, he met the Governor, the Duke of Kent, the father of “the Queen.”
“That horse is too old for you, Mr. Ince,” said the Duke.
“I like to ride easy, your Royal Highness,” Ince answered meekly.
“Right,” said the Duke, “but you deserve a better mount.”
A few days later the Duke sent Ince a fiery young horse, far too spirited for the old overseer to manage. The next time the Duke met Ince he was riding his shambling nag. The Duke stopped and asked where the new horse was. Ince confessed that it was more than he could manage, and begged leave to send it back to the Duke’s stable.
“No, no, Overseer, if you can’t ride him, put him in your pocket,” said the Duke handsomely. Ince took the hint and sold the horse for a good price.
Gunner Wilkinson talked of Nelson’s visit and the banquet given him in St. George’s Hall, the magnificent rock chamber at the end of the galleries, as if it had all happened last year, and first, last, and always he talked of the great siege.
A red flash, a puff of white smoke, a dull roar told that a yacht had just entered the harbor. As I looked through the narrow loophole, watching the sailors furl the sails, I glanced across the bay to the cork woods of Algeciras, and the lower foothills of the Sierras—and again I remembered the past. This is the thirteenth of April, 1783, the great day of the “Great Siege,” that began on a September morning three years before, when Mrs. Skinner touched off the first gun of the defence to General Eliott’s signal, “Britons strike home.” This day, the allies believe, will see the obstinate garrison that has held out so long, against scurvy and starvation within, as well as the enemy’s guns without, come to terms. The old General who has lived for more than a week on four ounces of rice per diem, just to prove how little a man need eat to live and fight, will hoist the white flag before evening gunfire. Down there in the bay lies the combined fleet of France and Spain, forty-seven “sail of the line”—real line of battleships, with white figureheads and wings and pleasant windowed balconies astern, and nice brass cannon shining through long rows of portholes. Alongside these three deckers and frigates are the strangest craft Gibraltar Bay has ever seen—ten famous unsubmergible, incombustible, floating batteries; uncouth monsters with bulging sides padded with wet sand, and hanging roofs covered with damp hides. Those Algeciras hills are crowded with spectators, come from all over Spain, to see the fall of Gibraltar. For eight hours the besiegers’ five hundred guns roared and spat fire and shells, and the garrison’s ninety and six answered with Boyd’s deadly hot shot. The bay was a gallant sight at sunrise—who would have seen it at evening gunfire? Not the people who had come to watch the great victory; they melted away from the hills like summer snow, for the victory was to the “old dog!” The indestructible floating batteries were destroyed, the beautiful ships sunk or in flames, their sides blackened, their sails tattered. That day’s fight cost the garrison something less than two hundred men, and the allies more than two thousand.
“Old Eliott stood there on the King’s Bastion during the fight,” the Gunner said. I wondered if he had shouted the slogun of his people in the debatable land. The Gunner asked what that might be. I gave him the old border cry of the Black Eliotts: