Part 2

Of the Gibraltar militant, the fortress and the key to the Mediterranean, you can see but the little that lies open to you and to every one along the ramparts. Of the real defensive works of the place you are not allowed to have even a guess. The ramparts stretch all along the western side of the rock, presenting to the bay a high shelving wall which twists and changes its front at every hundred yards, and in such an unfriendly way that whoever tried to scale its slippery surface at one point would have a hundred yards of ramparts on either side of him, from which two sides gunners and infantry could observe his efforts with comfort and safety to themselves; and from which, when tired of watching him slip and scramble, they could and undoubtedly would blow him into bits. But they would probably save him the trouble of coming so far by doing that before he left his vessel in the bay. The northern face of the Rock--that end which faces Spain, and which makes the head of the crouching lion--shows two long rows of teeth cut in its surface by convicts of long ago. You are allowed to walk through these dungeons, and to look down upon the Neutral Ground and the little Spanish town at the end of its half-mile over the butts of great guns. And you will marvel not so much at the engineering skill of whoever it was who planned this defence as at the weariness and the toil of the criminals who gave up the greater part of their lives to hewing and blasting out these great galleries and gloomy passages, through which your footsteps echo like the report of cannon.

Lower down, on the outside of this mask of rock, are more ramparts, built there by man, from which infantry could sweep the front of the enemy were they to approach from the only point from which a land attack is possible. The other side of the Rock, that which faces the Mediterranean, is unfortified, except by the big guns on the very summit, for no man could scale it, and no ball yet made could shatter its front. To further protect the north from a land attack there is at the base of the Rock and below the ramparts a great moat, bridged by an apparently solid piece of masonry. This roadway, which leads to the north gate of the fortress--the one which is closed at six each night--is undermined, and at a word could be blown into pebbles, turning the moat into a great lake of water, and virtually changing the Rock of Gibraltar into an island. I never crossed this roadway without wondering whether the sentry underneath might not be lighting his pipe near the powder-magazine, and I generally reached the end of it at a gallop.

There is still another protection to the North Front. It is only the protection which a watch-dog gives at night; but a watch-dog is most important. He gives you time to sound your burglar-alarm and to get a pistol from under your pillow. A line of sentries pace the Neutral Ground, and have paced it for nearly two hundred years. Their sentry-boxes dot the half-mile of turf, and their red coats move backward and forward night and day, and any one who leaves the straight and narrow road crossing the Neutral Ground, and who comes too near, passes a dead-line and is shot. Facing them, a half-mile off, are the white adobe sentry-boxes of Spain and another row of sentries, wearing long blue coats and queer little shakos, and smoking cigarettes. And so the two great powers watch each other unceasingly across the half-mile of turf, and say, "So far shall you go, and no farther; this belongs to me." There is nothing more significant than these two rows of sentries; you notice it whenever you cross the Neutral Ground for a ride in Spain. First you see the English sentry, rather short and very young, but very clean and rigid, and scowling fiercely over the chin strap of his big white helmet. His shoulder-straps shine with pipe-clay and his boots with blacking, and his arms are burnished and oily. Taken alone, he is a little atom, a molecule; but he is complete in himself, with his food and lodging on his back, and his arms ready to his hand. He is one of a great system that obtains from India to Nova Scotia, and from Bermuda to Africa and Australia; and he shows that he knows this in the way in which he holds up his chin and kicks out his legs as he tramps back and forward guarding the big rock at his back. And facing him, half a mile away, you will see a tall handsome man seated on a stone, with the tails of his long coat wrapped warmly around his legs, and with his gun leaning against another rock while he rolls a cigarette; and then, with his hands in his pockets, he gazes through the smoke at the sky above and the sea on either side, and wonders when he will be paid his peseta a day for fighting and bleeding for his country. This helps to make you understand how six thousand half-starved Englishmen held Gibraltar for four years against the army of Spain.

This is about all that you can see of Gibraltar as a fortress. You hear, of course, of much more, and you can guess at a great deal. Up above, where the Signal Station is, and where no one, not even an officer in uniform not engaged on the works, is allowed to go, are the real fortifications. What looks like a rock is a monster gun painted gray, or a tree hides the mouth of another. And in this forbidden territory are great cannon which are worked from the lowest ramparts. These are the present triumphs of Gibraltar. Before they came, the clouds which shut out the sight of the Rock as well as the rest of the world from its summit rendered the great pieces of artillery there as useless in bad weather as they are harmless in times of peace. The very elements threatened to war against the English, and a shower of rain or a veering wind might have altered the fortunes of a battle. But a clever man named Watkins has invented a position-finder, by means of which those on the lowest ramparts, well out of the clouds, can aim the great guns on the summit at a vessel unseen by the gunners lost in the mist above, and by electricity fire a shot from a gun a half-mile above them so that it will strike an object many miles off at sea. It will be a very strange sensation to the captain of such a vessel when he finds her bombarded by shells that belch forth from a drifting cloud.

No stranger has really any idea of the real strength of this fortress, or in what part of it its real strength lies. Not one out of ten of its officers knows it. Gibraltar is a grand and grim practical joke; it is an armed foe like the army in _Macbeth_, who came in the semblance of a wood, or like the wooden horse of Troy that held the pick of the enemy's fighting-men. What looks like a solid face of rock is a hanging curtain that masks a battery; the blue waters of the bay are treacherous with torpedoes; and every little smiling village of Spain has been marked down for destruction, and has had its measurements taken as accurately as though the English batteries had been playing on it already for many years. The Rock is undermined and tunnelled throughout, and food and provisions are stored away in it to last a siege of seven years. Telephones and telegraphs, signal stations for flagging, search-lights, and other such devilish inventions, have been planted on every point, and only the Governor himself knows what other modern improvements have been introduced into the bowels of this mountain or distributed behind bits of landscape gardening on its surface.

On the 25th of February, at half-past ten in the morning, three guns were fired in rapid succession from the top of the Rock, and the windows shook. Three guns mean that Gibraltar is about to be attacked by a fleet of war-ships, and that "England expects every man to do his duty." So I went out to see him do it. Men were running through the streets trailing their guns, and officers were galloping about pulling at their gloves, and bodies of troops were swinging along at a double-quick, which always makes them look as though they were walking in tight boots, and bugles were calling, and groups of men, black and clearly cut against the sky, were excitedly switching the air with flags from every jutting rock and every rampart of the garrison.

Behind the ramparts, quite out of sight of the vessels in the bay, were many hundreds of infantrymen with rifles in hand, and only waiting for a signal to appear above the coping of the wall to empty their guns into the boats of the enemy. The enlisted men, who enjoy this sort of play, were pleased and interested; the officers were almost as calm as they would be before a real enemy, and very much bored at being called out and experimented with. The real object of the preparation for defence that morning was to learn whether the officers at different points could communicate with the Governor as he rode rapidly from one spot to another. This was done by means of flags, and although the officer who did the flagging for the Governor's party had about as much as he could do to keep his horse on four legs, the experiment was most successful. It was a very pretty and curious sight to see men talking a mile away to a party of horsemen going at full gallop.

The life of a subaltern of the British army, who belongs to a smart regiment, and who is stationed at such a post as Gibraltar, impresses you as being as easy and satisfactory a state of existence as a young and unmarried man could ask. He has always the hope that some day--any day, in fact--he will have a chance to see active service, and so serve his country and distinguish his name. And while waiting for this chance he enjoys the good things the world brings him with a clear conscience. He has duties, it is true, but they did not strike me as being wearing ones, or as threatening nervous prostration. As far as I could see, his most trying duty was the number of times a day he had to change his clothes, and this had its ameliorating circumstance in that he each time changed into a more gorgeous costume. There was one youth whom I saw in four different suits in two hours. When I first noticed him he was coming back from polo, in boots and breeches; then he was directing the firing of a gun, with a pill-box hat on the side of his head, a large pair of field-glasses in his hand, and covered by a black and red uniform that fitted him like a jersey. A little later he turned up at a tennis party at the Governor's in flannels; and after that he came back there to dine in the garb of every evening. When the subaltern dines at mess he wears a uniform which turns that of the First City Troop into what looks in comparison like a second-hand and ready-made garment. The officers of the 13th Somerset Light Infantry wore scarlet jackets at dinner, with high black silk waistcoats bordered with two inches of gold lace. The jackets have gold buttons sewed along every edge that presents itself, and offer glorious chances for determining one's future by counting "poor man, rich man, beggar-man, thief." When eighteen of these jackets are placed around a table, the chance civilian feels and looks like an undertaker.

Dining at mess is a very serious function in a British regiment. At other times her Majesty's officers have a reticent air; but at dinner, when you are a guest, or whether you are a guest or not, there is an intent to please and to be pleased which is rather refreshing.

We have no regimental headquarters in America, and owing to our officers seeking promotion all over the country, the regimental _esprit de corps_ is lacking. But in the English army regimental feeling is very strong; father and son follow on in the same regiment, and now that they are naming them for the counties from which they are recruited, they are becoming very close corporations indeed. At mess the traditions of the regiment come into play, and you can learn then of the actions in which it has been engaged from the engravings and paintings around the walls, and from the silver plate on the table and the flags stacked in the corner.

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 canyons 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.

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 camp, of which he had charge. I had seen the 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.

This was the only trying experience of my stay in Gibraltar, and it is brought in here as a compliment to the force that guards the North Front. For of them, and the rest of the inhabitants and officers of the garrison, any one who visits there can only think well; and I hope when the Rock is attacked, as it never will be, that they will all cover themselves with glory. It never will be attacked, for the reason that the American people are the only people clever enough to invent a way of taking it, and they are far too clever to attempt an impossible thing.

II

TANGIER

A great many thousand years ago Hercules built the mountain of Abyla and its twin mountain which we call Gibraltar. It was supposed to mark the limits of the unknown world, and it would seem from casual inspection, as I suggested in the last chapter, that it serves the same purpose to this day. Men have crept into Africa and crept out again, like flies over a ceiling, and they have gained much renown at Africa's expense for having done so. They have built little towns along its coasts, and run little rocking, bumping railroads into its forests, and dragged launches over its cataracts, and partitioned it off among emperors and powers and trading companies, without having ventured into the countries they pretend to have subdued. But from Paul du Chaillu to W. A. Chanler, "the Last Explorer," as he has been called, just how much more do we know of Africa than did the Romans whose bridges still stand in Tangier?

The "Last Explorer" sounds well, and is distinctly a _mot_, but there will be other explorers to go, and perhaps to return. There are still a few things for us to learn. The Spaniards and the Pilgrim fathers touched the unknown world of America only four hundred years ago, and to-day any commercial traveller can tell you, with the aid of an A B C railroad guide, the name of every town in any part of it. But Turks and Romans and Spaniards, and, of late, English and Germans and French, have been pecking and nibbling at Africa like little mice around a cheese, and they are still nibbling at the rind, and know as little of the people they "protect," and of the countries they have annexed and colonized, as did Hannibal and Scipio. The American forests have been turned into railroad ties and telegraph poles, and the American Indian has been "exterminated" or taught to plough and to wear a high hat. The cowboy rides freely over the prairies; the Indian agent cheats the Indian--the Indian does not cheat him; the Germans own Milwaukee and Cincinnati; the Irish rule everywhere; even the much-abused Chinaman hangs out his red sign in every corner of the country. There is not a nation of the globe that has not its hold upon and does not make fortunes out of the continent of America; but the continent of Africa remains just as it was, holding back its secret, and still content to be the unknown world.

You need not travel far into Africa to learn this; you can find out how little we know of it at its very shore. This city of Tangier, lying but three hours off from Gibraltar's civilization, on the nearest coast of Africa, can teach you how little we or our civilized contemporaries understand of these barbarians and of their barbarous ways.

A few months since England sent her ambassador to treat with the Sultan of Morocco; it was an untaught blackamoor opposed to a diplomat and a gentleman, and a representative of the most civilized and powerful of empires; and we have Stephen Bonsal's picture of this ambassador and his suite riding back along the hot, sandy trail from Fez, baffled and ridiculed and beaten. So that when I was in Tangier, half-naked Moors, taking every white stranger for an Englishman, would point a finger at me and cry, "Your Sultana a fool; the Sultan only wise." Which shows what a superior people we are when we get away from home, and how well the English understand the people they like to protect.