in the old wars, and still held by our arms.

It was so upon the great Rock, the commonly counted impregnable
fortress, one of the ancient pillars of Hercules that still stands
silently strong and watchful at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea.

Nowhere did the war fever rage higher than at Gibraltar. Before
everything, a garrison town, battlemented and fortified on every side,
resonant from morning gunfire till watch-setting with martial sounds,
its principal pageants military, with soldiers filling its streets,
and sentinels at every corner, the prospect of active service was
naturally the one theme and topic of the place.

As spring advanced, one of those balmy-scented Southern springs when
flowers highly prized with us blossomed wild everywhere, even in the
fissures of the rock--when the days are already long and bright, under
ever-blue and cloudless skies, Gibraltar realised more fully that war
was close at hand. Lying in the high road to the East, it saw daily
the armed strength of England sweep proudly by. Now a squadron of
men-of-war: not the hideous, shapeless ironclad of to-day, but the
traditional three-decker, with its tiers of snarling teeth and its
beauty of white-bellying canvas and majestic spar. Now a troopship
with its consorts, two, or three, or more, tightly packed with their
living cargo--whole regiments of red-coated soldiers on their way to
Malta and beyond.

Such sights as these kept the garrison--friends and comrades of those
bound eastward--in a state of constant high-pitched excitement. At
first, forbidden by strict quarantine, there was no communication
between the sea and the shore, but all day long there were crowds of