More ghosts—the ghosts of the first two foxhounds whose names, Rockwood and Ranter, are a matter of history. Never was such a place for ghosts as Mons Calpe!
Patsy catechized Bracelet about the hunting half through luncheon; that was not fair. He asked more than his share of questions; when it comes to dogs, horses, or sport of any kind, men never are fair, they are so greedy. I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask, but I had to listen and pretend to be interested. From November, after the rains are over, till March, when the ground is too dry to carry the scent, they have two joyous runs a week. It’s the only thing that makes life here possible. The ride to the meets is almost always along the Spanish beach; some of them are a goodish distance; Long Stables, for instance, is thirteen miles away, Almoraima is twelve. We could imagine the relief of a gallop in the salt air after being cooped up on the Rock. There is every sort of country,—thick woods, coverts, crags; only, Bracelet complained, no jumping, because there are no fences or hedges in this benighted land. Everybody hunts, of course. An old gentleman, a sort of Nestor of the chase, died as he had lived, following the hounds. He was drowned at Washerwoman’s Ford the other day, on his way home from the meet. Quite a decent exit, wasn’t it? To die in the saddle at the end of a day’s hunting. He was a goodish age, too, turned seventy-six.
We had one disappointment: demanding to be taken to St. Michael’s Cave, we learned that it was no longer shown. Scorp, who in his far-off youth had known it well, was easily led to talk of the mysterious cave. I was the only one of the party who had grace to listen. The others were welcome to monopolize Bracelet—young, handsome, full of delicious insularity; I preferred the little old gray man. There are many impetuous merry lads; there is but one Rock Scorpion! There was something reptilian about the man. His language, full of Oriental allegory, moved sluggishly along, then broke into sudden bursts of antediluvian slang, and on every possible occasion stung us with the words, “You tip the hand.”
“‘Metuendus acumine caude,’ Ovid says of the scorpion,” Patsy quoted, “or, as one might say, Fearful with the sting of his tip!”
According to Old Scorp, the entrance to St. Michael’s Cave is now one thousand feet above the sea, about two thirds up the face of the mountain. Once upon a time the sea was level with the cave. Had not he and his brother, when they were boys, found fossil shells there, and the remains of a sea beach outside? The entrance was low, he remembered, but inside it was big as the Mosque of Cordova. Its wonderful stalactite columns, fifty feet high, looked like yellow alabaster; there were pointed arches springing from column to column. Lighted up with blue fire, as he had once seen the cave, it was a sight that, man or boy, he had never seen equalled. Except for its being so dark, those who lived here had a fine commodious dwelling. Yes, men have lived, fought, and died in the great cave, and left their flint knives, their stone axes, and their bones to tell the tale. Women have lived and worked there; they left their necklaces, their anklets, their bone needles, their household pottery behind them. There have been feasts here, for amphoræ with traces of wine have been found. There were other caves—oh, many! sea caves and land caves; some “professors” say that the old name Calpe means caved mountain. Whether or not that is true, Scorp, of his own knowledge, assured us that the Rock is full of secret caverns. As if these were not enough, the English are always burrowing and tunnelling. They have dug three tunnels under the Rock; in one they found what is more precious than gold, good water. No, we might not see the tunnels, not even the last of the smaller caves—the secrets of the mountain are jealously guarded.
Listening to the old man’s talk, we climbed a street of stairs cutting directly through a tangle of narrow alleys where Jews and other aliens live, to the upper level of North Town, where we found the Church of the Sacred Heart, its doors hospitably open. As it was the only door in Gibraltar, except the Cecil’s, that had not been shut and barred against us, we went in. The smell of the incense, the red light of the candles, was pleasantly familiar; the statues of saints and Virgin greeted us like old friends.
“I haf a friend in Brooklyn, Unity States,” said a voice beside us. “He send me weekly paper. I hope you know my friend—his name is——. Mebbe he spoke with you of Father Jims, of the Sacred Heart?”
Father Jims was young and soft-eyed, with a face such as Murillo painted in his “St. Joseph and the Holy Child.” He was so sure we had come to find him out, with some message from his friend, that it went to our hearts to undeceive him. He said he meant shortly to go to Brooklyn; from what his friend wrote, there was a rare field for missionary work! Father Jims was a Catalan; his eyes burned with a zeal that augured well for his mission among the heathen of Brooklyn. He showed us the modest treasures of his church, and presented us with a picture of St. Bernard, the patron of Gibraltar. As we parted we gave him a little money for his poor; he took it with a radiant smile I shall not soon forget. Among all the tremendous impressions we brought away from Gibraltar, the smile of the little Spanish servant maid in the market-place, and the smile of the poor Catalan priest in the church, are the kindest, and will perhaps remain with us the longest.
Near the church is the fine new hospital; an inscription tells that Lord Napier, of Magdala, laid the foundation stone.
In Lord Napier’s hospital there are women nurses. Teaching and nursing nuns are in charge of several charitable institutions, and in the post office reigns a postmistress; so, though Gibraltar is the most mannish, English-speaking place I know, there is plenty of civic and charitable work for women. It was strange to learn that the place is a colony and a port, as well as a fortress. On this tiny speck of earth you can find all the complex machinery of civil, military, and colonial existence, as neatly organized as life in an ant-hill. As to the port, it is now of consequence as a coaling station only. Prosaic enough, compared to the palmy days when it was the first smugglers’ headquarters of the Mediterranean! Tobacco is still smuggled into Spain, where it is a government monopoly, and is, consequently, very bad and very dear. The smuggling is largely carried on by dogs. The poor innocents are taken out in a boat at night from Gibraltar; when near the Spanish coast, small water-tight casks filled with contraband tobacco are fastened on either side of them, they are put overboard and swim to land. They learn not to bark or make a noise, but to scramble silently ashore into the arms of their contrabandista partners, just as in the days of the Deerfield Massacre, babies in New England were taught not to cry on account of the Indians.