l advice not to volunteer for duties in
future which I was not qualified to fulfil. "Volunteer," ye gods! when
she had absolutely entreated me to take him in charge.

Before leaving the Club-House, I was pressed to relate our adventures in
Africa. I had no pig-sticking exploits to make boast over; but I turned
the deaf side of my head to certain whispers about holy men who
imported wine in casks labelled "Petroleum," who affected to be
delivering the incoherent messages of inspiration when they were merely
trying to pronounce "The scenery is truly rural" in choice Arabic, and
who accounted for the black eye contracted by collision with the kerb by
a highly-coloured narrative of an engagement in mid-air with an emissary
of Sheitan. Neither did I accord any pleased attention to anecdotes of a
"lella," or Arab lady, who tempted the Scorpions to charge ten times its
value for everything she bought by telling them to send them to a
personage whose title was exalted. Gib is a very small place, and, like
most diminutive communities, is a veritable school for scandal. I took
my last walk over the Rock, past the "Esmeralda Confectionery," which
still had up the notice that hot-cross buns were to be had from seven to
ten a.m. on Good Friday, and paced to the light-house on the nose of the
promontory, where the meteor flag, ringed by a bracelet of cannon, flies
in the breeze. And then I meandered back, and began to ask myself, had
Marryat aught to do with the sponsorship of this outpost of the British
Empire? Shingle Point, Blackstrap Bay, the Devil's Tower, O'Hara's
Folly, Bayside Barrier, and Jumper's Bastion--the names were all
redolent of the Portsmouth Hard; and I almost anticipated a familiar
hail at every moment from the open door of "The Nut," and an inquiry as
to what cheer from the fog-Babylon.

The trip to Malaga on one of the Hall steamers which trade regularly
between London and that port, calling at Cadiz and Gibraltar, was very
agreeable, and the change to such dietary as liver and bacon was a
treat. We were but three passengers--a steeple-chasing sub of the 71st,
Senor Heredia, of Malaga, and myself. And now I have to make an open
confession. I am unable to decipher the log of that passage. I have a
distinct recollection of the liver and bacon, but more important events
have worn away from my mind. There are the traces of pencil-marks before
me; I dare say they were full of meaning when I scrawled them down, but
n