Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 70, No. 434, December, 1851

by Various

On the body was nothing but the shirt he wore the night of his flight from the hospital, but his legs were wrapt in a woman's dress. Across his breast, on her face, lay Esther, in her white under-garments—for the gown that wrapt the Jew's legs was hers. The glare of the torch was bright and red on the two prostrate figures, and on the staring appalled countenance of the man who held it—the group forming a glowing spot in the vast, sombre, vaulted space, where dim gleams of light were caught and repeated on projecting masses of rock, more and more faintly, till all was bounded by darkness.

Years afterwards my grandfather would sometimes complain of having been revisited, in dreams of the night, by that ghastly piece of Rembrandt painting.

The rest quickly flocked to the spot, and Esther was lifted and found to breathe, though the Jew was stiff and cold. Some diluted spirit, from the cellar of Bags, being poured down her throat she revived a little, when my grandfather caused two of the men to bear her carefully to his house; and the body of the Jew being wrapt in a piece of canvass, was placed on a mule and conveyed to the hospital for interment.

Medical aid restored Esther to consciousness, and she told how they came to be found in the cave.

Her father, on leaving the hospital, had fled by chance, as she thought, to this cave, for he did not reach it by the usual path, but climbed, in his delirious fear, up the face of the rock, and she had followed him as well as she could, keeping his white figure in sight. They had both lain exhausted in the cave till morning, when, finding that her father slept, she was on the point of leaving him to seek assistance. But, unhappily, before she could quit the place, Bags and his associates entered from their plundering expedition into the town, and, frightened at their drunken language, and recognising in Bags the man who had robbed her, she had crept back to her concealment. The party of marauders never quitted the cavern from the moment of establishing themselves in it. They spent the day in eating, drinking, singing songs, and sometimes quarrelling. Twice, at night, she ventured forth; but she always found one of them asleep across the entrance, so that she could not pass without waking him, and once one of them started up, and seemed about to pursue her—doubtless Bags, on the occasion when he thought he saw a ghost. Nevertheless, she had mustered courage twice to take some fragments of food that were lying near the fire, leaving each time a piece of money in payment; and she had also taken a lighted candle, the better to ascertain her father's situation. He had never spoken to her since the first night of their coming, and, during all those dark and weary hours, (for they were three nights and two days in the cavern,) she had remained by him listening to his incoherent mutterings and moans. The candle had showed her that he had lost much blood, from the wound in his forehead breaking out afresh, as well as from the other received in the hospital, though the latter was but a flesh wound. These she had bandaged with shreds of her dress, and had tried to give him some of the nourishment she had procured, but could force nothing on him except some water. Some hours, however—how long she did not know, but it was during the night—before Owen's party found her, the Jew had become sensible. He told her he was dying; and, unconscious of where he was, desired her to fetch a light. This she had procured in the same way as before, lighting the candle at the embers of the fire round which Bags and his friends reposed. Then the Jew, who seemed to imagine himself still in the hospital, bid her say whom, among those she knew in Gibraltar, she would wish to have charge of her when he was no more; and, on her mentioning Carlota, had desired her to take pen and paper and write his will as he should dictate it. Pen she had none, but she had a pencil and a scrap of paper in her pocket, and with these she wrote, leaning over to catch the whispered syllables that he with difficulty articulated.

From this paper it would appear that the Jew had some fatherly feelings for Esther concealed beneath his harsh deportment towards her. I can describe the will, for I have often seen it. It is written on a piece of crumpled writing-paper, about the size of a bank-note, very stained and dirty. It is written in Spanish; and in it the Jew entreats "the Señora, the wife of Sr. Don Flinder, English officer, to take charge of his orphan child, in requital whereof he leaves her the half of whatsoever property he dies possessed of, the other half to be disposed of for the benefit of his daughter." Then follows a second paragraph, inserted at Esther's own desire, to the effect that, should she not survive, the whole was to be inherited by the aforesaid Señora. It is dated "Abril 1781," and signed in a faint, straggling hand, quite different from the clear writing of the rest—"José Lazaro."

Esther would now have gone, at all hazards, to obtain assistance, but the Jew clutched her arm, and would not permit her to quit him. He breathed his last shortly after, and Esther remembered nothing more till she came to herself in the Major's house. The paper was found in her bosom.

Some days after this event my grandfather went with Owen into the town, during a temporary lull in the enemy's firing, to visit the house of Lazaro, in order to ascertain whether anything valuable was left that might be converted to Esther's benefit. They had some difficulty in finding the exact locality, owing to the utter destruction of all the landmarks. The place was a mass of ruins. Some provisions and goods had been left by the plunderers, but so mixed with rubbish, and overflowed with the contents of the casks of liquor and molasses, as to be of no value even in these times of dearth.

Owen, poking about among the wreck, observed an open space in the middle of one of the shattered walls, as if something had been built into it. With the assistance of my grandfather's cane, he succeeded in dislodging the surrounding masonry, already loosened by shot, and they discovered it to be a recess made in the thickness of the wall, and closed by a small iron door. At the bottom was lying a small box, also of iron, which they raised, not without difficulty, for its weight was extraordinary in proportion to its dimensions. This being conveyed to my grandfather's, and opened, was found to contain more than six hundred doubloons, (a sum in value about two thousand pounds,) and many bills of exchange and promissory notes, mostly those of officers. The latest was that of Von Dessel. These the Major, by Esther's desire, returned to the persons whose signatures they bore.

Esther never completely recovered from the effects of her sojourn in the cave, but remained always pale and of weak health. My grandfather took good care of her inheritance for her, and on leaving Gibraltar, at the conclusion of the siege, invested the whole of it safely for her benefit, placing her, at the same time, in the family of some respectable persons of her own religion. She afterwards married a wealthy Hebrew; and, in whatever part of the world the Major chanced to be serving, so long as she lived, valuable presents would constantly arrive from Gibraltar—mantillas and ornaments of jewellery for Carlota, and butts of delicious sherry for my grandfather. These, however, ceased with her death, about twenty years afterwards.