On the 19th of June General Eliott, accompanied by several of his
officers, paid a visit to the Spanish lines to congratulate General
Mendoza, who commanded there, on the promotion that he had just
received. The visit lasted but a short time, and it was remarked
that the Spanish officer seemed ill at ease. Scarcely had the party
returned to Gibraltar than a Swedish frigate entered the bay,
having on board Mr. Logie, H.M. Consul in Barbary, who had come
across in her from Tangier. He reported that a Swedish brig had put
in there. She reported that she had fallen in with the French
fleet, of twenty-eight sail of the line, off Cape Finisterre; and
that they were waiting there to be joined by the Spanish fleet,
from Cadiz.
The news caused great excitement; but it was scarcely believed, for
the Spanish general had given the most amicable assurances to the
governor. On the 21st, however, the Spaniards, at their lines
across the neutral ground, refused to permit the mail to pass; and
a formal notification was sent in that intercourse between
Gibraltar and Spain would no longer be permitted. This put an end
to all doubt, and discussion. War must have been declared between
Spain and England, or such a step would never have been taken.
In fact, although the garrison did not learn it until some time
later, the Spanish ambassador in London had presented what was
virtually a declaration of war, on the 16th. A messenger had been
sent off on the same day from Madrid, ordering the cessation of
intercourse with Gibraltar and, had he not been detained by
accident on the road, he might have arrived during General Eliott's
visit to the Spanish lines; a fact of which Mendoza had been
doubtless forewarned, and which would account for his embarrassment
at the governor's call.
Captain O'Halloran brought the news home, when he returned from
parade.
"Get ready your sandbags, Carrie; examine your stock of provisions;
prepare a store of lint, and plaster."
"What on earth are you talking about, Gerald?"
"It is war, Carrie. The Dons have refused to accept our mail, and
have cut off all intercourse with the mainland."
Carrie turned a little pale. She had never really thought that the
talk meant anything, or that the Spaniards could be really
intending to declare war, without having any ground for quarrel
with England.
"And does it really mean war, Gerald?"
"There is no doubt about it. The Spaniards are going to fight and,
as their army can't swim across the Bay of Biscay, I take it it is
here they mean to attack us. Faith, we are going to have some
divarshun, at last."
"Divarshun! You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Gerald."
"Well, my dear, what have I come into the army for? To march about
for four hours a day in a stiff stock, and powder and pigtail and a
cocked hat, and a red coat? Not a bit of it. Didn't I enter the
army to fight? And here have I been, without a chance of smelling
powder, for the last ten years. It is the best news I have had
since you told me that you were ready and willing to become Mrs.
O'Halloran."
"And to think that we have got Bob out here with us!" his wife
said, without taking any notice of the last words. "What will uncle
say?"
"Faith, and it makes mighty little difference what he says, Carrie,
seeing that he is altogether beyond shouting distance.
"As for Bob, he will be just delighted. Why, he has been working
till his brain must all be in a muddle; and it is the best thing in
the world for him, or he would be mixing up the Spaniards and the
Romans, and the x's and y's and the tangents, and all the other
things into a regular jumble--and it is a nice business that would
have been. It is the best thing in the world for him, always
supposing that he don't get his growth stopped, for want of
victuals."
"You don't mean, really and seriously, Gerald, that we are likely
to be short of food?"
"And that is exactly what I do mean. You may be sure that the Dons
know, mighty well, that they have no chance of taking the place on
the land side. They might just as well lay out their trenches
against the moon. It is just starvation that they are going to try;
and when they get the eighteen French sail of the line that Mr.
Logie brought news of, and a score or so of Spanish men-of-war in
the bay, you will see that it is likely you won't get your mutton
and your butter and vegetables very regularly across from Tangier."
"Well, it is very serious, Gerald."
"Very serious, Carrie."
"I don't see anything to laugh at at all, Gerald."
"I didn't know that I was laughing."
"You were looking as if you wanted to laugh, which is just as bad.
I suppose there is nothing to be done, Gerald?"
"Well, yes, I should go down to the town, and lay in a store of
things that will keep. You see, if nothing comes of it we should
not be losers. The regiment is likely to be here three or four
years, so we should lose nothing by laying in a big stock of wine,
and so on; while, if there is a siege, you will see everything will
go up to ten times its ordinary price. That room through ours is
not used for anything, and we might turn that into a storeroom.
"I don't mean that there is any hurry about it, today; but we ought
certainly to lay in as large a store as we can, of things that will
keep. Some things we may get cheaper, in a short time, than we can
now. A lot of the Jew and native traders will be leaving, if they
see there is really going to be a siege; for you see, the town is
quite open to the guns of batteries, on the other side of the
neutral ground.
"It was a mighty piece of luck we got this house. You see that
rising ground behind will shelter us from shot. They may blaze away
as much as they like, as far as we are concerned.
"Ah! There is Bob, coming out of his room with the professor."
"Well, take him out and tell him, Gerald. I want to sit down, and
think. My head feels quite in a whirl."
Bob was, of course, greatly surprised at the news; and the
professor, himself, was a good deal excited.
Illustration: The Professor gets excited.
"We have been living here for three hundred years," he said, "my
fathers and grandfathers. When the English came and took this
place--seventy-five years ago--my grandfather became a British
subject, like all who remained here. My father, who was then but a
boy, has told me that he remembers the great siege, and how the
cannons roared night and day. It was in the year when I was born
that the Spaniards attacked the Rock again; and a shell exploded in
the house, and nearly killed us all. I was born a British subject,
and shall do my duty in what way I can, if the place is attacked.
They call us Rock scorpions. Well, they shall see we can live under
fire, and will do our best to sting, if they put their finger on
us. Ha, ha!"
"The little man is quite excited," Captain O'Halloran said, as the
professor turned away, and marched off at a brisk pace towards his
home. "It is rather hard on these Rock people. Of course, as he
says, they are British subjects, and were born so. Still, you see,
in race and language they are still Spaniards; and their sympathies
must be divided, at any rate at present. When the shot and shell
come whistling into the town, and knocking their houses about their
ears, they will become a good deal more decided in their opinions
than they can be, now.
"Come along, Bob, and let us get all the news. I came off as soon
as I heard that our communication with Spain was cut off, and
therefore it was certain war was declared. There will be lots of
orders out, soon. It is a busy time we shall have of it, for the
next month or two."
There were many officers in the anteroom when they entered.
"Any fresh news?" Captain O'Halloran asked.
"Lots of it, O'Halloran. All the Irish officers of the garrison are
to be formed into an outlying force, to occupy the neutral ground.
It is thought their appearance will be sufficient to terrify the
Spaniards."
"Get out with you, Grant! If they were to take us at all, it would
be because they knew that we were the boys to do the fighting."
"And the drinking, O'Halloran," another young officer put in.
"And the talking," said another.
"Now, drop it, boys, and be serious. What is the news, really?"
"There is a council of war going on, at the governor's, O'Halloran.
Boyd, of course, and De la Motte, Colonel Green, the admiral, Mr.
Logie, and two or three others. They say the governor has been
gradually getting extra stores across from Tangier, ever since
there was first a talk about this business; and of course that is
the most important question, at present. I hear that Green and the
Engineers have been marking out places for new batteries, for the
last month; and I suppose fatigue work is going to be the order of
the day. It is too bad of them choosing this time of the year to
begin, for it will be awfully hot work.
"Everyone is wondering what will become of the officers who are
living out with their families, at San Roque and the other villages
across the Spanish lines; and besides, there are a lot of officers
away on leave, in the interior. Of course they won't take them
prisoners. That would be a dirty trick. But it is likely enough
they may ship them straight back to England, instead of letting
them return here.
"Well, it is lucky that we have got a pretty strong garrison. We
have just been adding up the last field state. These are the
figures--officers, noncommissioned officers, and men--artillery,
485; 12th Regiment, 599; 39th, 586; 56th, 587; 58th, 605; 72nd,
1046; the Hanoverian Brigade--of Hardenberg's, Reden's, and De la
Motte's regiments--1352; and 122 Engineers under Colonel Green:
which makes up, altogether, 5382 officers and men.
"That is strong enough for anything, but it would have been better
if there had been five hundred more artillerymen; but I suppose
they will be able to lend us some sailors, to help work the heavy
guns.
"They will turn you into a powder monkey, Repton."
"I don't care what they turn me into," Bob said, "so long as I can
do something."
"I think it is likely," Captain O'Halloran said gravely, "that all
women and children will be turned out of the place, before fighting
begins; except, of course, wives and children of officers."
There was a general laugh, at Bob.
"Well," he said quietly, "it will lessen the ranks of the
subalterns, for there must be a considerable number who are not
many months older than I am. I am just sixteen, and I know there
are some not older than that."
This was a fact, for commissions were--in those days--given in the
army to mere lads, and the ensigns were often no older than
midshipmen.
Late in the afternoon, a procession of carts was seen crossing the
neutral ground, from the Spanish lines; and it was soon seen that
these were the English officers and merchants from San Roque, and
the other villages. They had, that morning, received peremptory
orders to leave before sunset. Some were fortunate enough to be
able to hire carts, to bring in their effects; but several were
compelled, from want of carriage, to leave everything behind them.
The guards had all been reinforced, at the northern batteries;
pickets had been stationed across the neutral ground; the guard, at
the work known as the Devil's Tower, were warned to be specially on
the alert; and the artillery in the battery, on the rock above it,
were to hold themselves in readiness to open fire upon the enemy,
should they be perceived advancing towards it.
It was considered improbable, in the extreme, that the enemy would
attack until a great force had been collected; but it was possible
that a body of troops might have been collected secretly, somewhere
in the neighbourhood, and that an attempt would be made to capture
the place by surprise, before the garrison might be supposed to be
taking precautions against attack.
The next morning orders were issued, and large working parties were
told off to go on with the work of strengthening the fortifications;
and notice was issued that all empty hogsheads and casks in the town
would be bought, by the military authorities. These were to be
filled with earth, and to take the places of fascines, for which
there were no materials available on the Rock. Parties of men
rolled or carried these up to the heights. Other parties collected
earth, and piled it to be carried up in sacks on the back of
mules--there being no earth, on the rocks where the batteries would
be established--a fact which added very largely to the difficulties
of the Engineers.
On the 24th the Childers, sloop of war, brought in two prizes from
the west; one of which, an American, she had captured in the midst
of the Spanish fleet. Some of the Spanish men-of-war had made
threatening demonstrations, as if to prevent the sloop from
interfering with her; but they had not fired a gun, and it was
supposed that they had not received orders to commence hostilities.
Two English frigates had been watching the fleet; and it was
supposed to be on its way to join the French fleet, off Cape
Finisterre.
The Spaniards were seen, now, to be at work dragging down guns from
San Roque to arm their two forts--Saint Philip and Saint
Barbara--which stood at the extremities of their lines: Saint
Philip on the bay, and Saint Barbara upon the seashore, on the
eastern side of the neutral side. In time of peace, only a few guns
were mounted in these batteries.
Illustration: The Rock and Bay of Gibraltar.
Admiral Duff moved the men-of-war under his command, consisting of
the Panther--of sixty guns--three frigates, and a sloop, from their
usual anchorage off the Water Port--where they were exposed to the
fire of the enemy's forts--to the New Mole, more to the southward.
Bob would have liked to be out all day, watching the busy
preparations, and listening to the talk of the natives; who were
greatly alarmed at the prospect of the siege, knowing that the guns
from the Spanish forts, and especially from Fort Saint Philip,
could throw their shot and shell into the town. But Captain
O'Halloran agreed with his wife that it was much better he should
continue his lessons with Don Diaz, of a morning; for that it would
be absurd for him to be standing about in the sun, the whole day.
The evening lessons were, however, discontinued from the first; as
Dr. Burke had his hands full in superintending the preparations
making, at the hospitals, for the reception of large numbers of
wounded.
Bob did not so much mind this, for he had ceased to regard the time
spent with the professor as lessons. After he had once mastered the
conjugation of the verbs, and had learned an extensive vocabulary
by heart, books had been laid aside, altogether; and the three hours
with the professor had, for the last two months, been spent simply
in conversation. They were no longer indoors, but sat in the garden
on the shady side of the house; or, when the sky happened to be
clouded and the morning was cool, walked together out to Europa Point;
and would sit down there, looking over the sea, but always talking.
Sometimes it was history--Roman, English, or Spanish--sometimes Bob's
schooldays and life in London, sometimes general subjects. It mattered
little what they talked about, so that the conversation was kept up.
Sometimes, when it was found that topics failed them, the professor
would give Bob a Spanish book to glance through, and its subject
would serve as a theme for talk on, the following day; and as it
was five months since the lad had landed, he was now able to speak
in Spanish almost as fluently as in English. As he had learnt
almost entirely by ear, and any word mispronounced had had to be
gone over, again and again, until Don Diaz was perfectly satisfied,
his accent was excellent; and the professor had told him, a few
days before the breaking out of the war, that in another month or
two he should discontinue his lessons.
"It would be well for you to have one or two mornings a week, to
keep up your accent. You can find plenty of practice talking to the
people. I see you are good at making friends, and are ready to talk
to labourers at work, to boys, to the market women, and to anyone
you come across; but their accent is bad, and it would be well for
you to keep on with me. But you speak, at present, much better
Spanish than the people here and, if you were dressed up as a young
Spaniard, you might go about Spain without anyone suspecting you to
be English."
Indeed, by the professor's method of teaching--assisted by a
natural aptitude, and three hours' daily conversation, for five
months--Bob had made surprising progress, especially as he had
supplemented his lesson by continually talking Spanish with Manola,
with the Spanish woman and children living below them, and with
everyone he could get to talk to.
He had seen little of Jim, since the trouble began; as leave was,
for the most part, stopped--the ships of war being in readiness to
proceed to sea, at a moment's notice, to engage an enemy, or to
protect merchantmen coming in from the attacks of the Spanish ships
and gunboats, across at Algeciras.
Bob generally got up at five o'clock, now, and went out for two or
three hours before breakfast; for the heat had become too great for
exercise, during the day. He greatly missed the market, for it had
given him much amusement to watch the groups of peasant women--with
their baskets of eggs, fowls, vegetables, oranges, and fruit of
various kinds--bargaining with the townspeople, and joking and
laughing with the soldiers. The streets were now almost deserted,
and many of the little traders in vegetables and fruit had closed
their shops. The fishermen, however, still carried on their work,
and obtained a ready sale for their catch. There had, indeed, been
a much greater demand than usual for fish, owing to the falling off
in the fruit and vegetable supplies.
The cessation of trade was already beginning to tell upon the
poorer part of the population; but employment was found for all
willing to labour either at collecting earth for the batteries, or
out on the neutral ground--where three hundred of them were
employed by the Engineers in levelling sand hummocks, and other
inequalities in the ground, that might afford any shelter to an
enemy creeping up to assault the gates by the waterside.
Dr. Burke came in with Captain O'Halloran to dinner, ten days after
the gates had been closed.
"You are quite a stranger, Teddy," Mrs. O'Halloran said.
"I am that," he replied; "but you are going to be bothered with me
again, now; we have got everything in apple pie order, and are ready to
take half the garrison under our charge. There has been lots to do. All
the medical stores have been overhauled, and lists made out and sent
home of everything that can be required--medicines and comforts, and
lint and bandages, and splints and wooden legs; and goodness knows
what, besides. We hope they will be out in the first convoy.
"There is a privateer going to sail, tomorrow; so if you want to
send letters home, or to order anything to be sent out to you, you
had better take the opportunity. Have you got everything you want,
for the next two or three years?"
"Two or three years!" Carrie repeated, in tones of alarm. "You mean
two or three months."
"Indeed, and I don't. If the French and the Dons have made up their
mind to take this place, and once set to fairly to do it, they are
bound to stick to it for a bit. I should say you ought to provide
for three years."
"But that is downright nonsense, Teddy. Why, in three months there
ought to be a fleet here that would drive all the French and
Spaniards away."
"Well, if you say there ought to be, there ought," the doctor said,
"but where is it to come from? I was talking to some of the naval
men, yesterday; and they all say it will be a long business, if the
French and Spanish are in earnest. The French navy is as strong as
ours, and the Spaniards have got nearly as many ships as the
French. We have got to protect our coasts and our trade, to convoy
the East Indian fleets, and to be doing something all over the
world; and they doubt whether it would be possible to get together
a fleet that could hope to defeat the French and Spanish navies,
combined.
"Well, have you been laying in stores, Mrs. O'Halloran?"
"Yes, we have bought two sacks of flour, and fifty pounds of sugar;
ten pounds of tea, and a good many other things."
"If you will take my advice," the doctor said earnestly, "you will
lay in five times as much. Say ten sacks of flour, two hundred-weight
of sugar, and everything else in proportion. Those sort of things
haven't got up in price, yet; but you will see, everything will rise
as soon as the blockade begins in earnest."
"No, the prices of those things have not gone up much; but fruit is
three times the price it was, a fortnight ago, and chickens and
eggs are double, and vegetables are hardly to be bought."
"That is the worst of it," the doctor said. "It's the vegetables
that I am thinking of."
"Well, we can do without vegetables," Mrs. O'Halloran laughed, "as
long as we have plenty of bread."
"It is just that you can't do. You see, we shall be cut off from
Tangier--maybe tomorrow, maybe a fortnight hence--but we shall be
cut off. A ship may run in sometimes, at night, but you can't count
upon that; and it is salt meat that we are going to live upon and,
if you live on salt meat, you have got to have vegetables or fruit
to keep you in health.
"Now, I tell you what I should do, Gerald, and I am not joking with
you. In the first place, I would make an arrangement with the
people downstairs, and I would hire their garden from them. I don't
suppose they would want much for it, for they make no use of it,
except to grow a few flowers. Then I would go down the town, and I
would buy up all the chickens I could get. There are plenty of them
to be picked up, if you look about for them, for most of the people
who have got a bit of ground keep a few fowls. Get a hundred of
them, if you can, and turn them into the garden. Buy up twenty
sacks, if you like, of damaged biscuits. You can get them for an
old song. The commissariat have been clearing out their stores, and
there are a lot of damaged biscuits to be sold, by auction,
tomorrow. You would get twenty sacks for a few shillings.
"That way you will get a good supply of eggs, if the siege lasts
ever so long; and you can fence off a bit of the garden, and raise
fowls there. That will give you a supply of fresh meat, and any
eggs and poultry you can't eat yourselves you can sell for big
prices. You could get a chicken, three weeks ago, at threepence.
Never mind if you have to pay a shilling for them, now; they will
be worth five shillings, before long.
"If you can rent another bit of garden, anywhere near, I would take
it. If not, I would hire three or four men to collect earth, and
bring it up here. This is a good, big place; I suppose it is thirty
feet by sixty. Well, I would just leave a path from the door,
there, up to this end; and a spare place, here, for your chairs;
and I would cover the rest of it with earth, nine inches or a foot
deep; and I would plant vegetables."
"Do you mane we are to grow cabbages here, Teddy?" Captain
O'Halloran asked, with a burst of laughter.
"No, I wouldn't grow cabbages. I would just grow mustard, and
cress, and radishes. If you eat plenty of them, they will keep off
scurvy; and all you don't want for yourselves, I will guarantee you
will be able to sell at any price you like to ask for them and, if
nobody else will buy them, the hospitals will. They would be the
saving of many a man's life."
"But they would want watering," Captain O'Halloran said, more
seriously, for he saw how much the doctor was in earnest.
"They will that. You will have no difficulty in hiring a man to
bring up water, and to tend to them and to look after the fowls.
Men will be glad enough to work for next to nothing.
"I tell you, Gerald, if I wasn't in the service, I should hire
every bit of land I could lay hands on, and employ as many
labourers as it required; and I should look to be a rich man,
before the end of the siege. I was speaking to the chief surgeon
today about it; and he is going to put the convalescents to work,
on a bit of spare ground there is at the back of the hospital, and
to plant vegetables.
"I was asking down the town yesterday and I found that, at Blount's
store, you can get as much vegetable seed as you like. You lay in a
stock, today, of mustard and cress and radish. Don't be afraid of
the expense--get twenty pounds of each of them. You will be always
able to sell what you don't want, at ten times the price you give
for it now. If you can get a piece more garden ground, take it at
any price and raise other vegetables; but keep the top of the house
here for what I tell you.
"Well, I said nine inches deep of earth; that is more than
necessary. Four and a half will do for the radishes, and two is
enough for the mustard and cress. That will grow on a blanket--it
is really only water that it wants."
"What do you think, Carrie?" Captain O'Halloran asked.
"Well, Gerald, if you really believe the siege is going to last
like that, I should think that it would be really worth while to do
what Teddy Burke advises. Of course, you will be too busy to look
after things, but Bob might do so."
"Of course I would," Bob broke in. "It will give me something to
do."
"Well, we will set about it at once, then. I will speak to the man
downstairs. You know he has got two or three horses and traps down
in the town, and lets them to people driving out across the lines;
but of course he has nothing to do, now, and I should think that he
would be glad enough to arrange to look after the fowls and the
things up here.
"The garden is a good size. I don't think anything could get out
through that prickly pear hedge but, anyhow, any gaps there are can
be stopped up with stakes. I think it is a really good idea and, if
I can get a couple of hundred fowls, I will. I should think there
was plenty of room for them, in the garden. I will set up as a
poultry merchant."
"You might do worse, Gerald. I will bet you a gallon of whisky they
will be selling at ten shillings a couple, before this business is
over; and there is no reason in the world why you should not turn
an honest penny--it will be a novelty to you."
"Well, I will go down the town, at once," Gerald said, "and get the
seeds and the extra stores you advise, Teddy; and tomorrow I will
go to the commissariat sale, and buy a ton or two of those damaged
biscuits. We will take another room from them, downstairs, as a
storeroom for that and the eggs; and I will get a carpenter to come
up and put a fence, and make some runs and a bit of a shelter for
the sitting hens, and the chickens. Bob shall do the purchasing.
"You had better get a boy with a big basket to go with you, Bob;
and go round to the cottages, to buy up fowls. Mind, don't let them
sell you nothing but cocks--one to every seven or eight hens is
quite enough; and don't let them foist off old hens on you--the
younger they are, the better. I should say that, at first, you had
better take Manola with you, if Carrie can spare her; then you
won't get taken in, and you will soon learn to tell the difference
between an old hen and a young chicken."
"When you are buying the seed, O'Halloran," said Dr. Burke, "you
would do well to get a few cucumbers, and melons, and pumpkins.
They will grow on the roof, splendidly. And you can plant them near
the parapet, where they will grow down over the sides, so they
won't take up much room; and you can pick them with a ladder. The
pumpkin is a good vegetable, and the fowls will thank you for a bit
to pick, when you can spare one. They will all want manure, but you
get plenty of that, from the fowl yard."
"Why, Teddy, there seems no end to your knowledge," Mrs. O'Halloran
said. "First of all, you turn out to be a schoolmaster; and now you
are a gardener, and poultry raiser. And to think I never gave you
credit for knowing anything, except medicine."
"You haven't got to the bottom of it yet, Mrs. O'Halloran. My head
is just stored with knowledge, only it isn't always that I have a
chance of making it useful. I would be just the fellow to be cast
on a desert island. There is no saying what I wouldn't do towards
making myself comfortable there.
"But I do know about scurvy, for I made a voyage in a whaler,
before I got His Majesty's commission to kill and slay in the army;
and I know how necessary vegetables are. I only wish we had known
what the Spaniards were up to, a month since. We would have got a
cargo of oranges and lemons. They would have been worth their
weight in silver."
"But they wouldn't have kept, Teddy."
"No, not for long; but we would have squeezed them, and put sugar
into the juice, and bottled it off. If the general had consulted
me, that is what he would have been after, instead of seeing about
salt meat and biscuits. We shall get plenty of them, from ships
that run in--I have no fear of that--but it is the acids will be
wanting."
As soon as dinner was over, Captain O'Halloran went downstairs; and
had no difficulty in arranging, with the man below, for the entire
use of his garden. An inspection was made of the hedge, and the man
agreed to close up all gaps that fowls could possibly creep
through. He was also quite willing to let off a room for storage,
and his wife undertook to superintend the management of the young
broods, and sitting hens. Having arranged this, Captain O'Halloran
went down into the town to make his purchases.
A quarter of an hour later Bob started with Manola, carrying a
large basket, and both were much amused at their errand. Going
among the cottages scattered over the hill above the town, they had
no difficulty in obtaining chickens and fowls--the former at about
five pence apiece, the latter at seven pence--such prices being
more than double the usual rates. Manola's basket was soon full
and, while she was taking her purchases back to the house, Bob
hired two boys with baskets and, before evening, nearly a hundred
fowls were running in the garden.
The next day Bob was considered sufficiently experienced to
undertake the business alone and, in two more days, the entire
number of two hundred had been made up. Three of the natives had
been engaged in collecting baskets of earth among the rocks and, in
a week, the terrace was converted into a garden ready for the
seeds. As yet vegetables, although very dear, had not risen to
famine prices; for although the town had depended chiefly upon the
produce of the mainland, many of the natives had grown small
patches of vegetables in their gardens for their own use, and these
they now disposed of at prices that were highly satisfactory to
themselves.
O'Halloran's farm--as they called it, as soon as they heard, from
him, what he was doing--became quite a joke in the regiment; but
several of the other married officers, who had similar facilities
for keeping fowls, adopted the idea to some extent, and started
with a score or so of fowls.
"I wonder you didn't think of pigs, O'Halloran," one of the
captains said, laughing, as they were talking over the farm in the
mess anteroom; "pigs and potatoes. The idea of you and Burke, both
from the sod, starting a farm; and not thinking, first, of the two
chief national products."
"There is not room for praties, Sinclair; and as for pigs, there
are many reasons against it. In the first place, I doubt whether I
could buy any. In the second, there isn't room for them. In the
third, what should I give them to keep them alive? In the fourth,
pigs are illigant bastes but, in a hot country like this, I should
not care for a stye of them under my drawing room window. In the
fifth--"
"That will do, that will do, O'Halloran. We give way. We allow that
you could not keep pigs, but it is a pity."
"It is that, Sinclair. There is nothing would please me better than
to see a score of nice little pigs, with a nate stye, and a
magazine of food big enough to keep them, say, for a year."
"Three months, O'Halloran, would be ample."
"Well, we shall see, Sinclair. Teddy Burke says three years, but I
do hope it is not going to be as long as that."
"Begorra!" another Irish officer, Captain O'Moore, exclaimed; "if
it is three years we are going to be here, we had best be killed
and buried at once. I have been all the morning in the Queen's
Battery, where my company has been slaving like haythens, with the
sun coming down as if it would fry your brain in your skull pan;
and if that is to go on, day after day, for three years, I should
be dead in a month!"
"That is nothing, O'Moore. If the siege goes on, they say the
officers will have to help at the work."
"I shall protest against it. There is not a word in the articles of
war about officers working. I am willing enough to be shot by the
Spaniards, but not to be killed by inches. No, sir, there is not an
O'Moore ever did a stroke of work, since the flood; and I am not
going to demean myself by beginning.
"What are you laughing at, young Repton?"
"I was only wondering, Captain O'Moore, how your ancestors got
through the flood. Unless, indeed, Noah was an O'Moore."
"There is reason to believe that he was," the captain said,
seriously. "It must have been that, if he hadn't a boat of his own,
or found a mountain that the water didn't cover. I have got the
tree of the family at home; and an old gentleman who was learned in
these things came to the house, when I was a boy; and I remember
right well that he said to my father, after reckoning them up, that
the first of the house must have had a place there in Ireland
well-nigh a thousand years before Adam.
"I don't think my father quite liked it but, for the life of me, I
couldn't see why. It was just what I should expect from the
O'Moores. Didn't they give kings to Ireland, for generations? And
what should they want to be doing, out among those rivers in the
East, when there was Ireland, ready to receive them?"
Captain O'Moore spoke so seriously that Bob did not venture to
laugh, but listened with an air of gravity equal to that of the
officer.
"You will kill me altogether, Phelim!" Captain O'Halloran
exclaimed; amid a great shout of laughter, in which all the others
joined.
The O'Moore looked round, speechless with indignation.
"Gentlemen," he said, "I shall expect satisfaction for this insult.
The word of an O'Moore has never been doubted.
"Captain O'Halloran, my friend will call upon you, first."
"He may call as often as he likes, O'Moore, and I shall be happy to
converse with any friend of yours but, at present, that is all the
satisfaction you will get out of me. Duelling is strictly forbidden
on the Rock, and there is no getting across the Spanish lines to
fight--unless, indeed, you can persuade the governor to send out a
flag of truce with us. So we must let the matter rest, till the
siege is over; and then, if both of us are alive, and you have the
same mind, we will talk about it."
"I think, O'Moore," Dr. Burke, who had entered the room two or
three minutes before, said persuasively, "you will see that you are
the last man who ought to maintain that the first of your race
lived here, as far back as Adam. You see, we are all direct
descendants of Adam--I mean, all the rest of us."
"No doubt you are," Captain O'Moore said, stiffly.
"And one has just as much right as another to claim that he is the
heir, in a direct line."
"I suppose so, Burke," the officer said, "though, for the life of
me, I can't see what you are driving at."
"What I mean is this. Suppose Adam and the O'Moore started at the
same time, one in Ireland and the other in Eden; and they had an
equal number of children, as was likely enough. Half the people in
the world would be descendants of Adam, and the other half of the
O'Moore and, you see, instead of your being the O'Moore--the
genuine descendant, in the direct line, from the first of the
family--half the world would have an equal claim to the title."
Captain O'Moore reflected for a minute or two.
"You are right, Dr. Burke," he said. "I never saw it in that light.
It is clear enough that you are right, and that the less we say
about the O'Moores before the first Irish king of that name, the
better. There must have been some mistake about that tree I spoke
of.
"Captain O'Halloran, I apologize. I was wrong."
The two officers shook hands, and peace was restored; but Captain
O'Moore was evidently a good deal puzzled, and mortified, by the
problem the doctor had set before him and, after remaining silent
for some time, evidently in deep thought, he left the room. Some of
the others watched him from the window, until he had entered the
door of his own quarters; and then there was a general shout of
laughter.
"The O'Moore will be the death of me!" Teddy Burke exclaimed, as he
threw himself back in a chair, exhausted. "He is one of the best
fellows going, but you can lead him on into anything. I don't
suppose he ever gave a thought to the O'Moores, anywhere further
back than those kings. He had a vague idea that they must have been
going on, simply because it must have seemed to him that a world
without an O'Moore in it would be necessarily imperfect. It was Bob
Repton's questions, as to what they were doing at the time of the
flood, that brought him suddenly up; then he didn't hesitate for a
moment in taking them back to Adam, or before him. Just on the
ancestry of the O'Moores, Phelim has got a tile a little loose; but
on all other points, he is as sensible as anyone in the regiment."
"I wonder you didn't add, 'and that is not saying much,' doctor,"
one of the lieutenants said.
"I may have thought it, youngster; but you see, I must have made
exceptions in favour of myself and the colonel, so I held my
tongue. The fact that we are all here, under a sun hot enough to
cook a beefsteak; and that for the next two or three years we are
going to have to work like niggers, and to be shot at by the
Spaniards, and to be pretty well--if not quite--starved, speaks for
itself as to the amount of sense we have got between us.
"There go the drums! Now, gentlemen, you have got the pleasure of a
couple of hours' drill before you, and I am due at the hospital."