“Why, Owen, boy, d’ye see!” quoth the Major, stuttering with anxiety, “who can the other be?—her maid, eh?”—indistinct stage recollections of intriguing waiting-women dawning on him.
“Ahem!—why, you see, Major,” whispered Owen, “she wouldn’t come alone—couldn’t manage it at all, in fact, without the knowledge of her aunt, who sleeps in the next room; so I persuaded Carlota to come too, and gave her a sort of half promise that you would take care of her.” Here, wishing to cut short a rather awkward explanation, he ran under the balcony—one of the ladies dropped a cord—and Owen producing from under his coat a rope ladder, (he had sat up all night making it), attached it, and, as soon as it was drawn up, ascended, motioning to my astounded grandfather to keep it steady below. The Major, after a moment’s desperate half-resolve to make a hasty retreat from the perilous incidents which seemed momentarily to thicken round him, and leave his reckless friend to his fate, yielded to the force of circumstances, and did what was required of him. Then Owen lifted the ladies, one after the other, over the railing of the balcony, and they swiftly descended. First came Juana, who, scarcely touching the Major’s offered hand, lit on the pavement like gossamer; then Carlota descended, and making, in her trepidation, a false step near the bottom, came so heavily on the Major, that they rolled together on the stones. By the time they were on their feet again, Owen had slipped down the ladder, and, taking Juana under his arm, set off rapidly towards the bay.
If anything could have added to the Major’s discomfiture and embarrassment, it would have been the pressure of Carlota’s arm on his, as she hung confidingly on him—a pressure not proceeding from her weight only, but active, and with a meaning in it; but he was in that state of mental numbness from the successive shocks of astonishment, that, as with a soldier after the first two dozen, any additional laceration passed unheeded. He was embarked in an adventure of which he could by no means see the end; all was strange and dark in the foreground of his future; and if he had been at that moment tried, cast, and condemned for an imaginary crime, he would have been too apathetic to say anything in arrest of judgment.
With the silence and swiftness of a forlorn hope, they passed through the town and along the sandy causeway. The succession of white rolling waves on their left, where extended the full breadth of the Straits, while the bay on their right was almost smooth, showed the wind to be still against them; but it was now so moderate that they might safely beat up for the Rock. Arrived at the head of the stairs leading to the water, they paused in the angle of the wall to reconnoitre. Francisco was lying coiled up in the head of the boat, his hand on the rope, ready to cast her loose, and the boat-hook projecting over the bow. Above them, and behind the wall, at a little distance, they could hear the measured tread of the sentry, and catch the gleam of his bayonet as he turned upon his walk: a few vigorous shoves would carry them outside the sea-wall and beyond his ken. All depended on their silence; and like two stealthy cats did Owen and Juana descend to the boat—the Major and Carlota watching the success of their attempt with protruded necks. Cautiously did Owen stride from the last stair to the deck—cautiously did he transfer Juana to the bark, and guide her aft. The Major was just preparing to follow, when a noise from the boat startled him: Juana had upset an unlucky wine-jar which Francisco had left there. The sentry put his head over the wall, and challenged; Francisco, starting up, shoved hastily off; the sentry fired his piece, his bullet shattering the wine-jar that had caused the mischief. Juana screamed, Owen swore in English, and Francisco surpassed him in Spanish. There was no time to return or wait for the other pair, for the guard was alarmed by the sentry’s shot, and their accoutrements might be heard rattling near at hand, as they turned hastily out. Before they reached the wall, however, the boat had disappeared.
Major Flinders watched it till it was out of sight, and, at first, experienced a feeling of despair at being thus deprived of the aid of Garry’s boldness and promptitude, and left to his own resources. Presently, however, a gleam of comfort dawned upon him—perhaps Carlota would now abandon the enterprise, and he should thus, at any rate, be freed from the embarrassment her presence occasioned him. In this hope he was shortly undeceived. To have added the shame of failure and exposure to her present disappointment, while an opening to persevere still remained, did not suit that lady’s ardent spirit; and whether it was that the unscrupulous Garry had really represented the Major as very much in love, or whether such an impression resulted from her own lively imagination, she certainly thought her companion would be as much chagrined at such a denouement as herself. She displayed a prompt decision in this emergency, being, indeed, as remarkable for presence as the Major was for absence of mind. Taking the Major’s arm, she caused him swiftly to retrace his steps with her to the inn where he had slept. As they retreated, they heard the boom of a gun behind them, fired, doubtless, from the Point, at the Fair Unknown. At Carlota’s orders, a couple of horses, one with a side-saddle, were speedily at the inn-door; they mounted, and, before the sun was yet risen, had issued forth from the gate of Tarifa, on the road to Gibraltar.
The Major rode beside her like a man in a dream—in fact, he was partly asleep, having been deprived of a large portion of his natural and accustomed rest, and partly bewildered. A few days before he had been the most methodical, unromantic, not to say humdrum, old bachelor in his Majesty’s service; and here he was, how or why he did not well know, galloping away at daybreak with a foreign lady, of whose existence he had been ignorant a week before, with the prospect of being apprehended by her relatives for her abduction, and incarcerated by the Government for assisting in the escape of a smuggler. When at length roused to complete consciousness by the rapidity of their motion, he positively groaned in anguish of spirit, and vowed internally that, once within the shelter of his own quiet quarters, nothing on earth should again tempt him forth on such harum-scarum expeditions.
It was near noon when they reached Algeçiras, where they stopped to breakfast, both of them rather exhausted with fatigue and hunger. This town stands just opposite Gibraltar, across the bay—the road they had come by forms the base of a triangle, of which Cabrita Point is the apex, the bay washing one side of the projecting coast, the Straits the other. The Major was reserved and embarrassed; there was a tenderness about Carlota’s manner that frightened him out of his usual gallantry, and, to avoid meeting her glance, he looked steadily out of the window at the rock of Gibraltar, casting wistful glances at the spot where his quarters lay hidden in a little clump of foliage. Immediately after the meal he quitted the room, on pretence of looking after the horses. He determined to protract their stay in Algeçiras till late in the afternoon, that they might enter Gibraltar in the dusk, and thus avoid awkward meetings with equestrian parties from the garrison, who would then be hastening homewards, in order to be in before gun-fire, when the gates are shut.
On returning, still out of temper, to the room where he had left Carlota, he found her, quite overcome with fatigue, asleep on the sofa. Her head was thrown a little back on the cushion; her lips were just parted, and she looked in her sleep like a weary child. The Major approached on tiptoe, and stood regarding her. His ill-humour melted fast into pity. He thought of all her kindness to him, and, by a sudden soft-hearted impulse, took gently one of her hands projecting over the side of the sofa. Carlota opened her eyes, and squeezed the hand that held hers; whereupon the Major suddenly quitted his hold, and, retreating with great discomposure to the window, did not venture to look at her again till it was time to resume their journey.
At a little distance from Algeçiras is the river Palmones, called by the English the Second River. This was crossed by a floating bridge, pulled from shore to shore by a ferryman warping on a rope extended across. They had just reached the opposite bank of the stream, when Carlota noticed two horsemen galloping fast along the road they had just traversed. A second glance showed them to be Don Pablo and the lover of Juana. The first inquiries of the Governor had led him to suppose that all had escaped in the boat, and it was not till some time after that he had learned the true state of affairs.
The fugitives now hastened on in earnest, and roused their horses to a steady gallop, never pausing till they reached the Guadaranque, or First River, about a mile nearer Gibraltar than the other, and furnished with a similar bridge. The delay of the pursuers at the former ferry had thrown them far in rear; and my grandfather, inspired by the imminence of the peril, now conceived a bright idea—the brightest, probably, that ever flashed upon him—by executing which they might effectually distance their pursuers. Dropping his glove at a little distance from the shore, he sent the ferryman to fetch it, and then pushed off (Carlota having already embarked), and warped the bridge to the opposite bank, heedless of the frantic gesticulations of the proprietor, who screamed furiously after them to stop. When he reached the opposite side, he took out his pocket-knife and deliberately cut the rope. Having thus, as it were, blown up the communication in his rear, my grandfather, without the loss of his baggage, continued his retreat to the fortress; while the little Governor, who galloped up just as they were disappearing, was, like Lord Ullin, left lamenting.