How the gun-room of
Her Majesty's ship "Purgatory" had "cobbed" a tradesman of the
town, and of the row in consequence.
I heard capital stories of
the way in which Wilkins had escaped the guard, and Thompson had
been locked up among the mosquitoes for being out after ten without
the lantern. I heard how the governor was an old -, but to say
what, would be breaking a confidence: only this may be divulged,
that the epithet was exceedingly complimentary to Sir Robert
Wilson. All the while these conversations were going on, a strange
scene of noise and bustle was passing in the market-place, in front
of the window, where Moors, Jews, Spaniards, soldiers were
thronging in the sun; and a ragged fat fellow, mounted on a
tobacco-barrel, with his hat cocked on his ear, was holding an
auction, and roaring with an energy and impudence that would have
done credit to Covent Garden.
The Moorish castle is the only building about the Rock which has an
air at all picturesque or romantic; there is a plain Roman Catholic
cathedral, a hideous new Protestant church of the cigar-divan
architecture, and a Court-house with a portico which is said to be
an imitation of the Parthenon: the ancient religions houses of the
Spanish town are gone, or turned into military residences, and
masked so that you would never know their former pious destination.
You walk through narrow whitewashed lanes, bearing such martial
names as are before mentioned, and by-streets with barracks on
either side:
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