The Rulers of the Mediterranean

by Richard Harding Davis

When a man gets his company he presents the regiment with a piece of plate, or a silver inkstand, or a picture, or something which commemorates a battle or a man, and so the regimental headquarters are always telling a story of what has been in the past and inspiring fine deeds for the future. Each regiment has its peculiarity of uniform or its custom at mess, which is distinctive to it, and which means more the longer it is observed. Those in authority are trying to do away with these signs and differences in equipment, and are writing themselves down asses as they do so.

You will notice, for instance, if you are up in such things, that the sergeants of the 13th Light Infantry wear their sashes from the left shoulder to the right hip, as officers do, and not from the right shoulder, as sergeants should. This means that once in a great battle every officer of the 13th was killed, and the sergeants, finding this out, and that they were now in command, changed their sashes to the other shoulder. And the officers ever after allowed them to do this, as a tribute to their brothers in command who had so conspicuously obliterated themselves and distinguished their regiment. There are other traditions, such as that no one must mention a woman's name at mess, except the title of one woman, to which they rise and drink at the end of the dinner, when the sergeant gives the signal to the band-master outside, and his men play the national anthem, while the bandmaster comes in, as Mr. Kipling describes him in "The Drums of the Fore and Aft," and "takes his glass of port-wine with the orfficers." The Sixtieth, or the Royal Rifles, for instance, wear no marks of rank at the mess, in order to express the idea that there they are all equal. This regiment had once for its name the King's American Rifles, and under that name it took Quebec and Montreal, and I had placed in front of me at mess one night a little silver statuette in the equipment of a Continental soldier, except that his coat, if it had been colored, would have been red, and not blue. He was dated 1768. In the mess-room are pictures of the regiment swarming over the heights of Quebec, storming the walls of Delhi, and running the gauntlet up the Nile as they pressed forward to save Gordon. All of this goes to make a subaltern feel things that are good for him to feel.

Every day at Gibraltar there is tennis, and bands playing in the Alameda, and parades, or riding-parties across the Neutral Ground into Spain, and teas and dinners, at which the young ladies of the place dance Spanish dances, and twice a week the members of the Calpe Hunt meet in Spain, and chase foxes across the worst country that any Englishman ever rode over in pink. There are no fences, but there are ravines and cañons and precipices, down and up and over which the horses scramble and jump, and over which they will, if the rider leaves them alone, bring him safely.

And if you lose the rest of the field, you can go to an old Spanish inn like that which Don Quixote visited, with drunken muleteers in the court-yard, and the dining-room over the stable, and with beautiful dark-eyed young women to give you omelet and native wine and black bread. Or, what is as amusing, you can stop in at the officer's guard-room at the North Front, and cheer that gentleman's loneliness by taking tea with him, and drying your things before his fire while he cuts the cake, and the women of the party straighten their hats in front of his glass, and two Tommies go off for hot water.

There was a very entertaining officer guarding the North Front one night, and he proved so entertaining that neither of us heard the sunset gun, and so when I reached the gate I found it locked, and the bugler of the guard who take the keys to the Governor each night was sounding his bugle half-way up the town. There was a dark object on a wall to which I addressed all my arguments and explanations, which the object met with repeated requests to "move on, now," in the tone of expostulation with which a London policeman addresses a very drunken man.

TEA IN THE OFFICERS' QUARTERS

I knew that if I tried to cross the Neutral Ground I would be shot at for a smuggler; for, owing to Gibraltar's being a free port of entry, these gentlemen buy tobacco there, and carry it home each night, or run it across the half-mile of Neutral Ground strapped to the backs of dogs. So I wandered back again to the entertaining officer, and he was filled with remorse, and sent off a note of entreaty to his Excellency's representative, to whom he referred as a D. A. A. G., and whose name, he said, was Jones. We then went to the mess of the officers guarding the different approaches, and these gentlemen kindly offered me their own beds, proposing that they themselves should sleep on three chairs and a pile of overcoats; all except one subaltern, who excused his silence by saying diffidently that he fancied I would not care to sleep in the fever officer of the keys pass every night, and the guards turn out to salute the keys, and I had rather imagined that it was more or less of a form, and that the pomp and circumstance were all there was of it. I did not believe that the Rock was really closed up at night like a safe with a combination lock. But I know now that it is. A note came back from the mysterious D. A. A. G. saying I could be admitted at eleven; but it said nothing at all about sentries, nor did the entertaining officer. Subalterns always say "Officer" when challenged, and the sentry always murmurs, "Pass, officer, and all's well," in an apologetic growl. But I suppose I did not say "Officer" as I had been told to do, with any show of confidence, for every sentry who appeared that night—and there seemed to be a regiment of them—would not have it at all, and wanted further data, and wanted it quick. Even if you have an order from a D. A. A. G. named Jones, it is very difficult to explain about it when you don't know whether to speak of him as the D. A. A. G. or as General Jones, and especially when a young and inexperienced shadow is twisting his gun about so that the moonlight plays up and down the very longest bayonet ever issued by a civilized nation. They were not nice sentries, either, like those on the Rock, who stand where you can see them, and who challenge you drowsily, like cabmen, and make the empty streets less lonely than otherwise.

They were, on the contrary, fierce and in a terrible hurry, and had a way of jumping out of the shadow with a rattle of the gun and a shout that brought nerve-storms in successive shocks. To make it worse, I had gone over the post, while waiting for word from the D. A. A. G., to hear the sentries recite their instructions to the entertaining officer. They did this rather badly, I thought, the only portion of the rules, indeed, which they seemed to have by heart being those which bade them not to allow cows to trespass "without a permit," which must have impressed them by its humor, and the fact that when approached within fifty yards they were "to fire low." I found when challenged that night that this was the only part of their instructions that I also could remember.