The Rock of the Lion

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The cannonade from the Spanish lines had been booming all the time Archy and Langton were talking, but it sounded strangely near just then; and when Archy went to the window and looked towards the isthmus he saw that a new battery had been unmasked in the advanced lines of the Spaniards. Suddenly a deafening crash resounded behind him. A round shot had burst through the wall, and, amid the débris, lay the cot on which Langton was lying. He was unhurt, but Archy said:

"Come, it is too hot here for us. I must get help and carry you up to the hut in the rocks." And in an hour Langton lay under the rude but safe shelter provided for him under the rocks at Europa Point.

For the first week or two Archy was taken up with caring for Langton, and trying to make their cranny in the rocks comfortable. In this effort he met with the greatest kindness from Mrs. Curtis; and the deftness with which, out of their few belongings, she made them really a tolerably comfortable place to live, caused Archy to exclaim with enthusiasm:

"I have always heard, ma'am, that one woman could do as much as twelve men and a boy; and now I know it!"

Judkins's help was by no means to be despised, however, and with the resources of an old campaigner he showed them marvels. Archy was eager to begin the effort for his exchange immediately, but the garrison knew that Don Martin, the Spanish Commander-in-Chief, after the departure of the British fleet, had gone away for a few weeks to recover his health, and both Captain Curtis and General Eliot, to whom Captain Curtis introduced Archy, advised him to wait until Don Martin's return, as the second in command would probably do nothing in his absence. Archy acquiesced in this, and settled himself to spend the intervening time as patiently as he could. He was courteously, and even kindly, treated by everybody, and with his gay and jovial nature he soon became hail-fellow-well-met with the whole garrison and population, with one exception. This was the officers of the Hanoverian regiment, for King George had let some of his German troops for hire to fight the Spanish, as he had hired Hessians to fight the Americans. Archy found that the English officers and soldiers had but little more liking for the Hanoverians than he had, although it could not be denied that the Germans did their duty, and suffered and fought along with the rest. Archy took a malicious delight in telling how, in America, the Hessians were chiefly good for eating up the provender, and when there was fighting for dinner these prudent Teutons usually retired, and left the British to settle with the Americans. Archy, boy-like, although he had the stature of a man, avoided the Hanoverian officers ostentatiously, mimicked their droll accent whenever he had a chance, and took a vast amount of trouble to let them know how lightly he esteemed them—of which the stolid Germans were generally unconscious, and to which they were always indifferent.

The bombardment kept up steadily, but the loss of life was singularly small. The people grew accustomed to it in the day, but those who had fled southward in the beginning, to temporary shelter, were still alarmed by it during the night, and so remained in their miserable huts. As the case always is, after the first horror people began to see the amusing side of even very dreadful events, and it became a relief to laugh at the grotesque things that happened.

One evening, in the spring, about twilight, Archy Baskerville and Captain Curtis were walking soberly through one of the narrow streets of the upper town, passing the barracks of Colonel Schlippersgill's Hanoverian regiment. The windows of a small room, used as a mess-hall, were open, and around the table in the middle of the floor they could see a dozen burly German officers wreathed in smoke from their long pipes, and with great mugs of beer before them—for a supply of beer had been laid in especially for them.

"Look at them," said Archy, in a tone of deep disgust, "smoking and guzzling—guzzling and smoking—nothing but that."

"Nonsense," replied Captain Curtis, briskly. "Those poor Hanoverians can do nothing to please you. Their smoking is harmless, and their guzzling is of beer, which is much better for them than the rum and grog we give our men."

Just then they noticed, in the soft dusk of evening, a two-legged black shadow moving around the parapet of the long, low building in which was the mess-hall.