“So an American birthright is only worth one shilling?” J. jeered, and the international incident was closed, for the moment.
We slept at the Hotel Cecil, a comfortable house, with Spanish waiters and Hispano-Anglo fare. At breakfast we made the acquaintance of a pretty young officer, who wore his watch in a leather bracelet on his wrist. He laughed at our impatience to have done with tea and marmalade and be off to see the sights.
“Not much to see in Gib,” he said, “a beastly place! There’s the Trafalgar Cemetery, if you care for that sort of thing. See that old chap with the beard? If you want a guide he’s the best. He’s lying in wait for you, a real Rock Scorpion; don’t let him sting you on the ‘tips.’ He’s a native; must have come into the world before the law forbidding aliens to be born in Gibraltar.”
We thought that law must be hard to enforce. He said it was, but that there was so little living room on the Rock “they” were very strict about it. All ladies, except the wives of British subjects, must cross over to the main land before the birth of their children. Spain, he said, liked the law, because in the old days it had sometimes happened that sons of Spaniards born on the Rock had refused to serve in the Spanish army, claiming to be British subjects.
We asked how long strangers might stay in Gibraltar. He said that generally speaking they might stay as long as they wished. The hotel proprietor would get us the necessary permit; it might be extended for ten days. The Governor, Sir George White (he who was in command in Ladysmith when the garrison was relieved), was very exact about such matters.
Again commending us to Old Scorp, our friend with the watch bracelet left us, and we went out “for to admire and to see.” We avoided Old Scorp, a little gray creeping man with shabby European clothes, but he saluted us with the air of one who bides his time.
First we explored the North Town, crouching at the Rock’s base. Waterport Street, the main artery of trade, lies at the lowest level, the town rising in a series of terraces two hundred feet above. Houses, churches, hospitals, barracks, stables, all built of a uniform gray limestone, seem to have been honeycombed out of the Rock. The names at the street corners have a bold British military flavor; Prince Edward’s Ramp, Bomb House Lane, Devil’s Gap Steps, Victualling House Lane, Ragged Staff Stairs. The shops are small and stuffy, with stale meagre wares; the high-sounding names over their doors, Moorish, Spanish, Jewish names, such as Alcantara, Barabiche, Vallerinos, Montegriffos, show in whose hands the trade of Gibraltar has fallen. There are many names beginning with Ben, such as Beneluz and Beneliel. I believe that all the “Bens” are of Moorish descent: I have known a good many such, their dark, impenetrable eyes, their skilful hands, the frequent touch of genius they show, are a part of the Moor’s Legacy.
It was still early morning; the sky was a vault of blue fire, the air was keen with the salt and seaweed of the Mediterranean. The orange trees in the garden of the old Franciscan convent—now the Governor’s house—were covered with fruit and blossoms; there was a sound of bugles, the tramp of a regiment in Commercial Square; the soft cracked bells of the old cathedral clanged the hour; from far away, where the gunners were at practice, came the deep boom of cannon. Color, life, movement all around us! This was no time to dream, to remember, to entertain ghosts; breathless we looked through the kaleidoscope to-day at the gay little pieces flickering with the pulse of time!
North Town has the most variegated population in Europe; to match it one must cross the Straits to Tangiers. A British officer passed on a small milk-white stallion; an Ethiopian, with gold earrings, and a beauty line gashed on either cheek; a pair of sharp-eyed Jewish children, books under arm, on their way to school; an Andalusian widow, draped like a Tanagra figurine with soft dusky veils hanging to her shoe; another officer of higher rank, a blond man with a face like a mask, who gave us one quick challenge of the eye as he went his way—and I was aware that I was a guest, while he was at home, a master in his own house. He was followed by two ladies, his British wife and daughter, all fresh and shining with soap and energy. Both were Saxons, with hair like spun gold and calm blue eyes; they wore London clothes, and drove an English cob in an Irish jaunting car. They were at home, too, and looked as if the earth belonged to them. There were many soldiers loafing in twos and threes, marching in files, walking singly—all with a jauntiness, a buoyancy, that no other mere mortal men possess. Some of them—oh, joy!—wore real uniforms with red coats; dull clod-colored khaki is good enough for war, in peace there is no excuse for it.
The dash of winter in the air that was as the elixir of life to the English, making their horses prance, their cheeks glow, their eyes sparkle, affected the other inhabitants differently; the Spaniards looked pale, the Moors ashen. We met Don Jaime, black sombrero pulled over the eyes, black capa thrown over the shoulder, toga-fashion, muffling mouth and chin and showing an amber plush lining. The Don uncovered with a noble gesture, but we did not stop to speak to him, he was in such evident terror of taking cold. There were frigid tears in the almond eyes of Mr. Pohoomull as he stood at the door of the Indo-Persian Bazaar inviting us to enter. Though he wore a lovely gray embroidered cashmere cap and a Persian lamb coat, his teeth chattered. We lingered somewhat, beguiled by his Benares trays, Burmese silver, Persian carpets, ivory elephants, and were only saved from bankruptcy by the vision of a figure in the street, more truly Oriental than anything in Mr. Pohoomull’s shop. A tall, bronzed Moor in a green turban, a pink kaftan, yellow slippers, and a big hairy brown sulham, drawn over his head and falling to his knees, walked slowly down the middle of the road, driving before him with a rod as long as himself a flock of green and bronze turkeys. We followed to the Moorish market, where he entered into discussion with another Morisco in a white sulham and red morocco slippers, presumably touching the price of turkeys. As an excuse to linger near, we bought pistachio nuts in a fresh lettuce leaf, dates from the desert on their yellow stalks, golden apples of Hesperides—they called them tangerines—with dark, glossy leaves. The market was noisy with the bickering of poultry, pigeons, and netted quails in wicker baskets. In the English market on the other side of the way, we bought for half a peseta violets, roses, and splendid Tyrian purple bourganvillia. The flower sellers, a group of withered women sitting on the ground, looked like the Fates. The fish market was a picture. The fish of the Mediterranean seem brighter colored than other fish. Like wet jewels the red mullet, like silver the turbot, like many-colored enamels the big variegated conger eels the Romans liked so well. Gibraltar, which produces nothing, is splendidly victualled. The beef comes from Morocco, the vegetables from Spain, the fruit from every Mediterranean port. At the fruit stalls were bunches of Spanish grapes, long, purple, white, hanging thick overhead, a background for Barbary baskets filled with citrons, persimmons, cocoanuts, apples, and pears. In the foreground were heaps of black olives and smooth green melons, the latter a cross between watermelon and cantaloupe. The Spaniards know how to keep them fresh half the winter. The vegetable stalls were quite as handsome in their way, the color used skillfully in broad masses. Deep chrome gourds, violet eggplant, a long cane basket of vermilion tomatoes and gray-green artichokes; the beauty of color so enthralled us that we were not quick enough in making way for a majestic British matron, followed by a neat Spanish maid. The lady must have been at least a colonel’s wife—if such go to market—for she looked through us, without seeing us, as if we had been so much glass. To make amends, the little servant gave us soft welcoming glances, but we felt abashed and went sadly away. As we left the market, we saw our young officer of the watch bracelet sniffing at the carcass of a mighty new-killed pig—then we knew that he was of the “commissariat.”