The Bad Boy Writes About Gibraltar--The Irish-English Army--
How He Would Take the Fortress--Dad Wants to Buy the “Rock.”
Gibraltar, in Spain and England. My Dear Foster Uncle: It seems good
to get somewhere that you can hear the English language spoken by the
Irish, and the English soldiers are nearly all Irish. When you think of
the way the British government treats the Irish, and then you look on
while an orderly sergeant calls the roll of a company, and find that
nine out of ten answer to Irish names, and only one out of ten has the
cockney accent, you feel that the Irish ought to rule England, and an
O'Rourke or a O'Shaunnessy should take the place of King Edward. It
makes a boy who was brought up in an Irish ward in America feel like he
was at home to mix with British soldiers who come from the old sod.
Dad says that there is never an army anywhere in the world, except the
armies of Russia and Japan, that the bravest men are not answering to
Irish names, and always on the advance in a fight, or in the rear when
there is a retreat. Dad says that in our own army, when the North and
South were fighting, the Irish boys were the fellows who saved the
day. They wanted to fight nights and Sundays, and never struck for an
eight-hour day, or union wages. When the fighting was over, and soldiers
were sick, or discouraged, and despondent, an Irish soldier would come
along, maybe on crutches, or with a bullet in his inwards, and tell
funny stories and make the discouraged fellows laugh in spite of
themselves, and when another fight was on, you had to tie the wounded
Irish soldiers to their cots in the hospital, or put them in jail to
keep them from forgetting their wounds, and going to the front for one
more fight. Dad says if there was an Irish nation with an army and navy,
the whole world would have to combine to whip them, and yet the nation
that has the control of the Irish people treats them worse than San
Francisco treats Chinamen, makes them live on potatoes, and allows
landlords to take away the potatoes if they are shy on the rent. Gosh,
if I was an Irishman I would see the country that walked on my neck in
hell before I would fight for it. (Gee, dad looked over my shoulder and
saw what I had written, and he cuffed me on the side of the head, and
said I was an incendiary and that I ought to have sense enough not to
write treason while a guest on British soil.) Well, I don't care a
darn. It makes me hot under the collar when I think of the brave Irish
fellows, and I wonder why they don't come to America in a body and be
aldermen and policemen. When I get home I am going to join the Fenians,
and raise thunder, just as quick as I am old enough.
[Illustration: Keep away from the banks for fear the banks will cave in
329]
Well, sir, we have been through the Suez canal, and for a great modern
piece of engineering it doesn't size up with a sewer in Milwaukee, or
a bayou in Louisiana. It is just digging a railroad cut through the
desert, and letting in the water, and there you are. The only question
in its construction was plenty of dredging machines, and a place to
pile the dirt, and water that just came in of its own accord, and stays
there, and smells like thunder, and you see the natives look at it, and
keep away from the banks for fear the banks will cave in on them, and
give them a bath before their year is up, cause they don't bathe but
once a year, and when they skip a year nobody knows about it, except
that they smell a year or so more frowsy, like butter that has been left
out of the ice box. Our boat went right along, and got out of the canal,
because it was a mail boat, but the most of the boats we saw were tied
up to the bank, waiting for the millennium. We saw some Russian boats
waiting for the war to blow over and as we passed them every Russian on
board looked scared, as though we were Japs that were going to fire a
torpedo under them, or throw a bomb on deck, and when our boat got by
the Russian boat, the crew was called to prayers, to thank the Lord, or
whoever it is that the Russians thank, because they had escaped a dire
peril. I guess the Russians are all in, and that those who have not gone
to the front are shaking hands with themselves, and waiting for the dove
of peace to alight on their guns. The Suez canal probably pays, and no
wonder, cause they charge what they please to boats that go through, and
if they don't pay all they have to do is to stay out, and go around a
few thousand miles. It is like a ferry across a little stream out west,
where there is no other way to cross, except to wade or go around, and
the old ferryman sizes up the wagon load that wants to cross, and takes
all they have got loose, and then the travelers are ahead of the game,
cause if they didn't cross the stream they would have to camp on the
bank until the stream dried up. Some day an earthquake will split that
desert wide open and the water in the Suez canal will soak into the
sand and the steamboats will lay in the mud, and be covered with a sand
storm, and future ages will be discovering full rigged ships down deep
on the desert. Dad says we better sell our stock in the canal and buy
air ship stock. And talk about business, there is more tonnage goes
through the Soo canal, between Michigan and Canada than goes through the
Suez and we don't howl about it very much.
Well, sir, I have studied Gibraltar in my geography, and read about
it in the papers, and seen its pictures in advertisements, but never
realized what a big thing it was. Now, who ever thought of putting
that enormous rock right there on that prairie, but God. I suppose the
English, when they saw that rock, thought the good Lord had put it there
for the English to drill holes in, for guns, and when the Lord was
busy somewhere else, the English smoughed the rock away from Spain, by
playing a game with loaded dice, and when England got it, that country
decided to arm it like a train robber, and hold up the other nations of
the earth. When a vessel passes that rock it has to hold up its hands
and salute the British flag, or get a mess of hardware fired into its
vital parts, but that is all it amounts to, cause it couldn't win any
battle for England, and could only sink trading vessels. The walls of
the rock are perforated from top to bottom, with holes big enough for
guns to squirt smoke and shells, but if the enemy should stay away from
right in front of the holes, they might shoot till doomsday and never
hit anything but fishing smacks and peddlers of oranges. Gibraltar is
like a white elephant in a zoological garden. It just eats and keeps off
the flies with its short tail, and visitors feed it peanuts and wonder
what it was made for, and how much hay it eats. Gibraltar is like a
twenty-dollar gold piece that a man carries in his watch pocket for an
emergency, which he never intends to spend until he gets in the tightest
place of his life, and it wears out one pocket after another, and some
day drops through on to the sidewalk, and a tramp finds it and goes on
a bat and gets the worth of his money, and has a good time, if he saves
enough to buy a bromo seltzer the next morning after. It is like the
Russian war chest, that is never to be opened as long as they can borrow
money. If Gibraltar could be put on castors, and rolled around from one
country to another, England could whip all Europe and Asia. It would be
a Tro Jane horse on a larger scale, and be a terror; but, say, if it got
to America we wouldn't do a thing to it. We would run a standpipe up the
side, and connect it with an oil pipe line, fill Gibraltar's tunnels and
avenues, and magazines and barracks with crude oil, and touch a match to
it, and not an Englishman would live to tell about it. Gee, but I would
be sorry for the Irish soldiers, but I guess they wouldn't be there,
cause they wouldn't fight America. Well, if England ever has a big war,
and she gets chesty about Gibraltar, and says it is impregnable, and
defies the world to take it, I bet you ten dollars it could be taken in
twenty-four hours. If I was a general, or an admiral, I would have about
forty tank steamers, loaded with kerosene, and have them land, innocent
like, right up beside Gibraltar, ostensibly to sell oil for perfumery
to the natives, who would all be improved by using kerosene on their
persons. Then I would get on a barrel, on deck of my flag ship, and
command the English general to surrender unconditionally, and if he
refused I would set a slow match on every oil vessel, and have the crews
get in skiffs and pull for the opposite shore, and when the oil got on
fire, and rolled up all over Gibraltar, and burned every living thing, I
would throw water from a fire department boat on the rock, and she would
split open and roll all over-the prairie, and then I would bury the
cremated dead out on the desert, and seek other worlds to conquer, like
Alexander the Great. But don't be afraid. I won't do it unless they make
me mad, but you watch my smoke if they pick on your little Hennery too
much, when he grows up.
But I haven't got any kick coming about Gibraltar, cause they treated
dad and I all right, and the commander detailed an ensign to show us all
through the fortress. Now don't get an ensign mixed up with a unique,
such as showed us through the Turkish harem. An English ensign is just
as different from a Turkish unique as you can imagine. Every man to his
place. You couldn't teach a Turkish unique how to show visitors around
an English fortress, and an English ensign in a Turkish harem would
bring on a world's war, they are so different. Well, wc went through
tunnels in the rock, and up and down elevators, and all was light as day
from electric lights, and we saw ammunition enough to sink all the ships
in the world, if it could be exploded in the right place, and they have
provisions enough stored in the holes in the rock to keep an army for
forty years if they didn't get ptomaine poisoned from eating canned
stuff. It was all a revelation to dad, and when we got all through,
and got out into the sunlight, we breathed free, and when clad got his
second wind he broke up the English officers by taking out a pencil and
piece of paper, and asked them what they would take for the rock and its
contents, and move out, and let the American flag float over it. Well,
say, they were hot, and they told dad to go plum to 'ell, but dad
wouldn't do it. He said America didn't want the old stone quarry,
anyway, and if it did it could come and take it. I guess they would have
had dad arrested for treason, only when we got out into the town there
was the whole British Atlantic squadron lined up, with the men up in the
rigging like monkeys, and every vessel was firing a salute, as a yacht
came steaming by. Dad thought war had surely broke out, or that some
rich American owned the yacht, but it turned out to be Queen Alexandria
and a party of tourists, and when the band played “God Save the Queen,”
dad got up on his hind legs and sang so loud you would think he would
split hisself, and a fellow went up and threw his arms around dad, and
began to weep, and the tears came in dad's eyes, and another fellow
pinched dad's watch, and the celebration closed with everybody getting
drunk, and the queen sailed away. Say, we are going to Spain, on the
next boat, and you watch the papers. We will probably be hung for taking
Cuba and the Phillipines.
Yours,
Hennery.
[Illustration: Sang so loud you would think he would split hisself 333]