At the inn, that night, the Major betook himself to rest early, that
he might be ready to start for Gibraltar betimes in the morning, for
on the following day their leave was to expire.
He had slept soundly for several hours, when he was awoke by Owen, who
entered with a candle in his hand. The Major sat up in bed and rubbed
his eyes.
"Time's up, my boy, eh?" said he, with a cavernous yawn. "I should
have liked another hour of it, but it can't be helped," (preparing to
turn out).
"I didn't want to spoil your rest last night," said Owen, seating
himself on the edge of the bed, "so I said nothing about a mishap
that has occurred. That smuggling villain, Francisco, took advantage
of our absence to fetch a contraband cargo in the boat from Gibraltar,
and has been caught in attempting to run it here."
"God bless me," said my grandfather, "who would have thought it!--and
he such a capital cook! But what's to be done? where's the boat?"
"The boat is, for the present, confiscated," said Garry; "but I
daresay the Governor would let us have it in the morning, on
explaining, and would perhaps release Francisco, with the loss of
his cargo; but--but--in fact, Major, I don't want the Governor to
know anything about our departure."
My grandfather stared at him, awaiting further explanation.
"Juana looked pale last night," said the Ensign after a pause.
The Major did not dispute the fact, though he could not, for the life
of him, see what the state of Juana's complexion had to do with the
subject.
"She never liked that dingy Spanish lover of hers," said the Ensign,
"and her father intends she shall marry him in a month. 'Twould make
her miserable for life."
"Dear me," said my grandfather, "how do you know that?"
"She told me so. You see," said Owen, shading the candle with his
hand, so that my grandfather couldn't see his face, and speaking
hurriedly, "I didn't intend we should start alone--in fact--that
is--Juana has agreed to fly with me to Gibraltar."
"Agreed!--fly!"--gasped my grandsire: "what an extraordinary young
fellow!"
"She's waiting for us now," resumed Garry, gathering courage after the
first plunge into the subject; "we ought to be off before daylight.
Oblige me, my dear sir" (smiling irresistibly), "by getting up
immediately."
"And how are we to get away," asked my grandfather, "supposing this
insane scheme of yours to be attempted?"
"I've bribed the sentry at Francisco's place of durance," returned the
Ensign. "We shall get out of the town the instant the gates are
opened; and the boat is tied to the steps, as before, only under the
charge of a sentry whom we can easily evade. Every guarda costa in the
place was sent out last night to blockade a noted smuggler who has
taken refuge in Tangier; so, once out, we are safe from pursuit: I
found it all out after you had gone to bed."
The disposition of Major Flinders, as the reader knows, was the
reverse of enterprising--he wouldn't have given a straw to be
concerned in the finest adventure that ever happened in romance. He
paused with one stocking on, inclined, like the little woman whose
garments had been curtailed by the licentious shears of the pedlar, to
doubt his own identity, and wondering if it could be really he, John
Flinders, to whom such a proposition was broached, requiring him to
assist in invading the peace of a family. As soon as he recovered his
powers of speech, of which astonishment had for a moment deprived him,
he began earnestly to dissuade the Ensign from the enterprise; but
Owen knew his man too well, and had too much youthful vivacity of will
to allow much time for remonstrance.
"Look you, Major," said he, "I'm positive I can't live without Juana.
I'll make a bold stroke for a wife. The thing's settled--no going back
now for me; and I shall go through with it with or without you. But
you're not the man, I'm sure, to desert a fellow in extremity, at a
time, too, when the advantages of your experience and coolness are so
peculiarly needed. 'Call you that backing of your friends?'"
The compliment, or the quotation, or both, softened the Major. "'Would
it were night, Hal, and all well,'" said he, half mechanically
following the Falstaffian train of ideas Owen had artfully conjured
up, and at the same time drawing on the breeches which that astute
youth obsequiously handed to him.
It was still dark when they issued forth into the narrow and dingy
streets of Tarifa. My grandfather, totally unaccustomed to visit the
glimpses of the moon in this adventurous fashion, was full of strange
fears--heard as many imaginary suspicious noises and voices as
Bunyan's Pilgrim in the dark valley--and once or twice stopt abruptly
and grasped Owen's arm, while he pointed to a spy dogging them in the
distant gloom, who turned out to be a door-post. But Owen was now in
his element; no tom-cat in Tarifa was more familiar with housetops and
balconies at the witching hour than he, and he stepped gaily on.
Presently they were challenged by a sentry, to whom Owen promptly
advanced and slipped into his itching palm a doubloon, when the
trustworthy warrior immediately turned upon his heel, and, walking to
the extremity of his post, looked with great vigilance in the opposite
direction.
Owen advanced to a grated window and tapped. Immediately the burly
face of Francisco showed itself thereat, his white teeth glancing
merrily in a glimmer of moonshine. A bar, previously filed through,
was removed from the window, and Owen, taking him by the collar to
assist his egress, drew him through as far as the third button of his
waistcoat, where he stuck for a moment; but the substance was elastic,
and a lusty tug landed him in the middle of the narrow street.
Receiving Frank's instructions given in a hurried whisper, to go at
once to where the boat lay, and cast her off, ready to shove off on
the instant, he nodded and disappeared in the darkness, while Owen and
the Major made for the Governor's house.
Arrived near it, Owen gave a low whistle--a peculiar one, that my
grandfather remembered to have heard him practising to Juana on the
previous day--when, to the unutterable surprise of the Major, _two_
veiled figures appeared on the balcony.
"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 Algeciras, 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 Algeciras
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 Algeciras 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.
The sun was already declining, and threw their shadows far before them
on the sands, as they rode along the beach close to the water. The bay
at this inner extremity makes a great circular sweep--radii drawn from
the rock to different distant points of the arc would be almost equal;
and for half an hour they continued to see Gibraltar at nearly the
same distance to the right and in front of them, holding itself aloof
most provokingly. Twilight descended as they passed the Spanish lines
and entered on the Neutral Ground. The Major glanced anxiously at his
watch--in a few minutes the gun from Middle Hill would give the signal
for shutting the gates, and doom them irretrievably to return into
Spain for the night. For the first time in his life Major Flinders
really punished his horse, lifting the tired beast along with whip and
rein. Carlota's kept easily beside him under her lighter weight, and
they rapidly neared the barrier. Just as they passed it, a stream
of flame shot from the rock, illumining objects like a flash of
lightning;--then came the heavy report of the gun--another minute and
the drawbridge at Landport would be lifted; but they were upon it.
They dashed across somewhat in the style of Marmion quitting Douglas's
castle, "just as it trembled on the rise," and were safe in Gibraltar.