CHAPTER VIII.

THE ALCALDE.

This rencontre, by illustrating the danger of lingering and of making chance acquaintance--dangers for which no credit would be given by the Horse Guards, and against which we found no hints afforded by our "John Murray"--caused us to hasten through Estrelo without paying a visit to the nuns of Santa Theresa, which (on the base of our acquaintance with Sister Veronica) we had proposed to do; and a ride of ten miles further, through a fruitful and beautiful district, brought us to the ancient ducal town of Medina Sidonia, where the Spanish commandant invited us to dinner, and where, finding ourselves in safe quarters, we spent a pleasant evening, and with cigars and Ciudad Real, Tresillo and Monte, whiled away the hours until we retired to our posada, where we slept undisturbed by rats or robbers, as quietly as if we had been in the best hotel in London.

We crossed a stream next day, and arrived at Arcos de la Frontierra, a picturesque little town, situated upon a lofty rock, almost insulated by the Guadalete, and so difficult of access on the south and west that we had some trouble in discovering an entrance to it anywhere.

The aspect of the place, with all its flat-roofed or red-tiled houses clustering on the summit of a steep and abrupt rock; its two large parish churches, with the square campanile of Santa Maria, and the façade of the palace of the reverend the vicar-general to the metropolitan of Seville, all lit up by the flush of a Spanish setting sun, and throwing a huge broad shadow across the girdling Guadalete, and that rich undulating country which stretches far away beyond it, pleased me so much that, dismounting at the foot of the eminence, I seated myself among some fallen walls and prostrate columns--doubtless fragments of the ancient Arcobriga--to make a little sketch of the place.

Reclined against a mass of vine-covered ruin, Slingsby of "Ours" had fallen fast asleep with his horse's bridle buckled over his left arm, and both he and the nag occupied a prominent place in the foreground of my view, and a wayside cross, covered with rich creepers, and having a sulky-looking raven seated on its summit, was in the middle distance. My labours proceeded rapidly and greatly to my own satisfaction when they were suddenly interrupted by a heavy hand being roughly laid on my shoulder. I looked up. Four men, muffled in the inevitable, invariable, and eternal dirty brown cloak, in which we always see the mysterious characters stride, swagger, and swell on the boards of minor theatres, and which a Spaniard is never without, under any circumstances, appeared beside me. Two had drawn swords, and two cocked blunderbusses.

"The señores will understand that they are our prisoners?" said one.

"Who the deuce are you--comrades of Don Fabrique, I suppose?"

"Heaven forbid! we are honest men--alguazils of Arcos, and the Caballeros must both come before the señor alcalde."

"For what purpose?" I demanded hastily.

"The señor will soon be informed," said one.

"To his cost, perhaps," added a second.

"Vaya, come along," growled a third, "or it may be the worse for you."

Finding expostulation vain, I roused Jack, who after revolving in his own mind whether or not he ought to revolve them--for his pistol had six barrels, we took our horses by their bridles, and accompanied the bravo-like alguazils, whose good-will we sought to cultivate by being liberal with our cases of cheroots.

The alcalde, a bustling little manufacturer of Cordovan leather, received us in his office, stuck his barnacles on his nose, summoned his escribano, and opened the case with an air of awful pomp and chilling consequence; but he seemed to be about as well qualified for the office of lawgiver as Mr. Justice Shallow.

"The señores, who seemed to be British officers belonging to the garrison of Gibraltar, of which her Most Catholic Majesty Donna Isabella is sovereign, whatever Queen Victoria may assert to the contrary, were found making a sketch--a military sketch, no doubt--of her ancient city of Arcos, in the province of Andalusia; and the señores, of course, knew the law framed by the Cortes on that point."

"Of sketching the city of Arcos?"

"No."

"What then?"

"Any city," returned the fussy little alcalde.

"But this is not a fortified town."

"But it might be fortified."

"No doubt--but it is not fortified at the present moment."

"Tonto de mi! what does that matter?"

"Why you stupid old----" Jack Slingsby was beginning, but I placed a hand upon his mouth, and the irritable little alcalde continued.

"For what purpose was the sketch--this sketch made?--answer me that, señor."

"To please myself and to show my friends."

"Of course, a likely story truly," he sneered, as he deliberately tore my poor production into several pieces, threw them into the brassero of charcoal which glowed in the centre of the apartment, and watched until every fragment was entirely consumed. I gazed at him in silence, but feeling an emotion of considerable disgust; for although well aware that to sketch any fortified place or garrison town, barrack, or citadel, was strictly forbidden, it never occurred to me that the restriction could apply to the miserable conglomeration of Spanish huts and crumbling Moorish hovels which clustered round the churches on the rock of Arcos; but in their ignorance of the arts the Spaniards, like the Turks, cannot see a difference between a little artistic sketch and a regular plan drawn for the most desperate military purposes.

"So we are suspected of being spies," said Slingsby; "I am glad that sketching was omitted in my education, and that I never could draw aught but a cork or a bill in my life."

"But this may prove no matter for laughter, Jack," said I, as the alcalde, with awful gravity, after duly entering our names and designations in a huge tome, turned to another part thereof, wiped his spectacles and addressed us. I must own to feeling some uneasiness, having once had a brother officer who went on sick leave to Cadiz, where he was shot as a Christino priest; he was our senior lieutenant, poor Bob Rasper, and was as much like a priest as the great Mogul. I had an uncle who was very near being strangled by an alcalde, who was persuaded he was Don Carlos; and we all know that Lord Carnarvon was well nigh murdered in mistake for Don Miguel, while Captain Widrington was about to be garotted by another official, who thought he might be an agent of Marshal Baldomero Espartero, now first minister of Donna Isabella II. These instances of Spanish justice, clearness, and legal acumen were floating before me when the little ruffian of an alcalde curled up his mustachios and said,--

"The señores will have passports, no doubt?"

"No passports," I replied.

"Demonio!" ejaculated this Andalusian Solon, while the alguazils (having finished their cheroots) began to clank their sabres and cock their ominous-looking trabujos. "Then you must both be sent to prison in irons, and kept under guard until we communicate with Espartero."

We lost alike our patience and temper at this piece of intelligence.

"Beware, señor alcalde," said I, "for the very person you have named may send you to the galleys for this insolent interference. We are two British officers going on public duty to Seville, and being passed through the Spanish lines by the officer commanding there, require no other passports than our swords and our uniform, which you had better respect, or we may play a mischief with you. Our ambassador at Madrid----"

"Vaya usted a los infernos!" exclaimed the alcalde, in a towering fit of official indignation; "I shall show you how we treat those who enter our city of Arcos without proper credentials, and I verily believe you to be a couple of pitiful raterillos. Search and secure them!"

How this affair might have ended, I have no means of knowing; but nothing saved us from much trouble and perhaps danger, but the sudden discovery of a letter, which was found by one of the alguazils who rudely plunged a hand into one of my pockets. It was addressed in high-flowing terms to the most illustrious señor, the captain general of Andalusia, and bore the great official seal of the Governor of Her Britannic Majesty's garrison of Gibraltar. On beholding this, the countenance of the alcalde fell. This human bladder, which was inflated by so much wrath and Jack-in-office pride, suddenly collapsed. His manner changed at once; he was profuse in his apologies, and on a wave of his hand, those alguazils who, a moment before, were ready to drag us to some foul prison and rudely too, like ruffians as they doubtless were, slunk aside and withdrew; and in five minutes after we were mounted, clear of Arcos, and trotting along the road which ascended from the banks of the Guadalete.

"Those Spaniards will never change," said Jack; "they will ever be bullies or cravens; so cudgels or cannon shot are the only means of argument with them."

We then laughed at the whole affair--at the absurd pomposity of the alcalde, and the idea of our being arrested as spies.

At a trot we traversed the little town of Alcantarilla. It lies not far from the Guadalquiver, a stream that wanders through a fertile hollow, which in the days of the Cæsars was a hopeless march. We crossed the bridge which was built by the hands of the Romans, who placed a tower at each end for defence. Slingsby, with a waggish smile, recommended me to make a sketch of these interesting remains; but a wholesome terror of the alcalde of Arcos was yet too fresh in my mind, so we pushed on towards Los Palacies, in company with a long train of mules from the seaport of San Lucar de Barameda. Their drivers were gaily attired, and were all sturdy and hearty fellows, who beguiled the way with stories, laughter, and songs of love and wine, or legends of the Avalos, the Moors of Ronda, and of Bravonnel the Moor of Zaragozza and his ladylove Guadalara, while they sung to the cracking of their whips, the merry jangle of the mule-bells, and the thrum of a guitar. With all this, they were prepared for every emergency, having poniards, blunderbusses, and other weapons--being armed to the teeth, in fact; and with them we travelled until Seville rose before us, with the fretted spires and gothic pinnacles of its cathedral and Alcazar, and the gigantic tower of La Giralda, rising above the domes of the Mohammedan times and the befrays of the Christians; and all steeped in the unclouded blaze of an Andalusian sunset, with the Guadalquiver winding through a low valley in the foreground, bordered by groves of the orange and citron, and the green undulating ridges of the Sierra towering in the distance, with a golden vapour resting on the mellowed peaks, which bound a landscape that, in the days of Alfonso the Wise, was studded by a hundred thousand cottages and oil-mills.

But the Guadalquiver seemed as muddy as the Thames, where it approaches the ancient fane of St. John of Alfarache, and there its turgid tide was lashed and beaten by the steamers from San Lucar; and we could see them ploughing their way (with red lights hanging at their fore cross-trees) into the evening haze that settled over Seville.

Our passports were demanded by the officer commanding an ill-accoutered guard at the gate: but our letter addressed to the captain general freed us from further question, and he politely directed us to an hotel.

We rode through the grass-grown streets of the lazy Sevillanos, I reflecting on stories of Pedro the Cruel and the past glories of the Arab city--Jack Slingsby reflecting on the thoroughfares, which he said "were remarkably dingy, devilish dirty, and all that sort of thing," until we discovered the hotel de la Reyna near the Lonja, or Exchange, and close to the far-famed cathedral church. There we took up our quarters for the night.

"At last we are in Seville!" said I, as I threw myself into a down fauteuil, after tossing off a glass of iced Valdepenas, and flung aside the last week's Madrid papers, the 'Heraldo' and 'España;' "in Seville, where Trajan, Adrian, and Theodosius were born, and where----"

"You shall flirt with the pretty Paulina to-morrow," said Jack; "pass over the decanter; thanks; I can take you off your stilts in a twinkling, my boy."