The spring of 1780 advanced, and the dauntless garrison on the Rock saw no prospect of relief, but every man, woman, and child of English birth only grew the more determined not to surrender. No complaints were heard from any of them, and those of the highest rank and most delicate nurture were the bravest where all were brave. Especially was this true of the women, and the spectacle of their patience and calm courage was inspiring to the men. The Spanish bombardment was not then the terrible thing it became afterwards, but it was sufficiently annoying, and many officers preferred, as Captain Curtis did, the safety of camping out for their families to the dangers of the barracks, which were often bombarded in the night-time. The town, too, had become sickly, and the higher and purer air of the rocks was better than the close quarters of the narrow streets and rickety houses, half wrecked by the bombardment, which were hot-beds of disease. Their supplies were still plentiful, such as they were; but in those days only a few coarse sorts of provisions could be kept for any length of time, and the besieged people had to live on salt beef, hard biscuit, beans, and the few small and inferior fish they could catch. The hard fare told sadly on most of those who had to endure it, but Archy Baskerville positively throve on it, and grew taller and broader and ruddier every day.

Some weeks passed before the return of Don Martin de Soltomayer, the Spanish Commander-in-Chief, and before Archy could take any steps towards passing through the Spanish lines. In that time Langton grew much better, and was able to walk about, although still pale and weak. Archy took the most devoted care of him, and found also plenty of time to do many small services for Mrs. Curtis, who learned to love him; and as for Dolly, she soon came to think him almost as agreeable a person as Judkins, and her heart was quite won when, once she was a little ill, Archy sneaked out at night and surreptitiously milked the one old cow still left the garrison, and which was especially reserved for the sick. Mrs. Curtis reproved him for it, but her reproaches sat lightly on Archy—by which it will be seen that he was far from a perfect young man.

He was also an expert fisherman, and spent a good deal of his time on the sea-shore, from whence he would bring nearly every day a few miserable fish, which were esteemed the greatest delicacy by Mrs. Curtis, to whom Archy always gave them. Musa, the Moor, was generally hanging about the shore, engaged in the same employment. He was silent and uncommunicative by nature, but Archy's irrepressible cordiality and affability were such that he would have been on good terms eventually with an ogre, so that after a little while a sort of friendship came to subsist between them. At long intervals Musa would disappear for several days at a time, and Archy knew well enough that this time was spent in expeditions to the African coast. Sometimes Musa would succeed in getting across the Straits, and sometimes, after watching his chance for days, he would be unable to elude the Spanish cruisers, and would return to Gibraltar.

In the latter part of March the Spanish Commander-in-Chief came back, and Archy, without any trouble, got permission to go with a flag of truce to the Spanish headquarters. Langton, who was still far from well, was extremely anxious to go with him to the Spanish camp, and, as Archy had permission to take one companion, he yielded to Langton's importunities and agreed to let him go.

"Although I know I shall have to lug you back up these rocks; you will never be able to get back alone, as weak as you are," he added; at which Judkins, who was standing by, touched his cap respectfully, and said:

"If Mr. Langton ain't able to climb up, sir, or to git down, for that matter, there's a fine, strong wheelbarrow here, and I can trundle him both ways quite convenient."

Langton, bursting out laughing, cried:

"That is the very thing. But we must leave the wheelbarrow at the Land Port. The Spaniards would shoot us on sight in such a rig."

At mid-day, by tacit consent, the bombardment and the reply always abated—and in that interval an odd procession made its way towards the Land Port. Archy, laughing uproariously, with Captain Curtis smiling broadly, preceded the wheelbarrow. In it sat Langton, quite composed and dignified, and evidently enjoying his ride, while Judkins, looking as serious as an undertaker, trundled him carefully down the steep paths. Neither Archy's jeers, nor chaff from those of his brother officers he met, nor the smiles of ladies and children, disturbed Langton, who calmly descended at the Land Port, tightened his belt, straightened his cap, and announced that he was ready to see the Spanish Commander and his whole staff.

LANGTON WAS TAKEN DOWN THE HILL IN A WHEELBARROW

A soldier, with a white handkerchief tied to a ramrod, went in advance of them towards the isthmus. As soon as he was perceived, an officer in the uniform of the Walloon regiment came towards them, and they met about half-way between the Spanish and English lines. The officer, a remarkably handsome young man, introduced himself as Lieutenant Von Helmstadt, of the Walloon regiment, and Archy handed him a letter from General Eliot to Don Martin, which he received with great respect, raising his cap as he did so, and saying:

"I will conduct you, with pleasure, if you will submit to the usual custom of being blindfolded?"

"Certainly," responded Archy, taking out his handkerchief, which was bound tightly over his eyes by Von Helmstadt, and Langton and the soldier were treated likewise.

Thus blindfolded, they stumbled on for a half-mile through the Spanish lines. Presently they realized that they were entering a tent, and Von Helmstadt removing the handkerchiefs from their eyes, they found themselves in the tent of Don Martin. The Spanish Commander-in-Chief was a handsome, middle-aged man, with a truly Spanish dignity and suavity. The party was introduced by Von Helmstadt, and Archy produced General Eliot's letter, which Don Martin read attentively, and then folded up.

"You would find it extremely difficult to get through Spain, even with the best passports," he said, in French. "Our people do not readily distinguish between the English and the Americans, and they are now unreasonably exasperated against the English."

"I know it, sir," answered Archy, respectfully; "but if you will give me the passports I will take my chances."

"It is a matter for consideration," continued Don Martin. "I could not guarantee your safety a mile beyond my lines. I shall have to lay the affair before my Government, and I will inform you of the result."

Archy, who was quick of wit, saw in a moment that Don Martin had no overweening desire to pass him through, and the immediate turning of the conversation towards an indifferent subject convinced him that he would not soon see the outside world. After a few minutes they rose, Don Martin saying, with great dignity:

"Present my best compliments to General Eliot, and say to him I am most happy to hear of his continued good health, and that I will immediately communicate with him by letter concerning this matter."

They were again blindfolded before leaving the tent, and so made their way back to the British lines, accompanied by Von Helmstadt. The manners of this young Walloon officer had been most courteous, and on parting he said, good-humoredly, "I hope that none of our balls has a message for you."

"The same to you," responded Langton.

As soon as they were out of ear-shot, Langton said, significantly, to Archy:

"You'll not get out."

"You think so?"

"I know it. But you'll see all the fun"—this somewhat lugubriously.

Archy walked on, sad and disappointed, and did not even smile when Langton climbed into the wheelbarrow and Judkins rushed it up the steep roadway at a smart gait.

As might have been foreseen, Don Martin did nothing towards getting Archy to France.

A courteous and ornate reply was received promptly to General Eliot's letter, and after that came a long silence. Then followed a series of letters, requesting all sorts of proof that Archy was what he represented himself to be. These, Don Martin always politely explained, were in the usual order, and came not from him, but from the Minister at Madrid.

Archy was asked to show his uniform and sword. He had neither. There were more letters, more asseverations of a desire to pass him through; but the upshot of all the negotiations was that Archy never found he had made the slightest real progress towards getting out. He wrote many letters to his uncle, and even to Lord Bellingham, trusting to the chance of Musa's getting them across to the African coast; but even while writing them he felt the uselessness of it. And, after a while, what seemed to him a strange thing came to pass. In spite of his being a prisoner, he began to be heart and soul with the British garrison. As he explained it, in a burst of confidence, to Langton:

"I ought not to want you to win. I ought to wish that the Spaniards should march in to-morrow morning; but I don't—and I can't. Don't mistake me. I would lay down my life this moment to drive you out of North America. That is my country, and there you are my enemies; but, dash me, Langton, if I can spend months here, eating your bread, such as it is, well treated by everybody, seeing what a gallant fight you are making against the Spaniards, without feeling as one of you. I suppose it is clean against the articles of war to feel so, but I can't help it."

"I would feel the same way, I dare say, under the same circumstances," replied Langton. "You see, you are not a prisoner on American ground—or English ground either, for that matter; that makes all the difference in the world. And, besides, you are not treated as a prisoner. You would be a queer fish not to feel as you do."

"At all events, I shall do my duty; and if that old hidalgo, Don Martin de Stick-in-the-mud, thinks I mean to give up trying to get away from here, he does not know Archibald Baskerville, Esquire—that much is plain. I have written him letters in English, French, and Spanish—such French and Spanish! I dare say the old fellow finds the reading of them as hard work as I do the writing them, and I can keep it up as long as he can."

The quiet endurance which was necessary to bear this life of tedium and hardship patiently had been left out in Archy's make-up, and he became restless, and yearned for an adventure of some sort. Naturally his mind turned towards the sea, and he began to wish that he might go with Musa on one of his expeditions across the Straits. He knew very well that if captured he would be taken for an Englishman, and the chances were ten to one against him then; but he had no notion of being captured. Musa, under the circumstances, would meet with great indulgence, as the Spaniards were extremely anxious to turn the neutrality of the Moors into active friendship.

The very day this scheme entered his mind he went down to the shore early in the morning, and found Musa getting his lines ready to fish from the rocks. They were quite alone, and Archy began, artfully:

"Do you know, Musa, I believe I should die if I were to be shut up like this anywhere I could not see salt-water. I am a sea-officer, you know; and in my own dear country, before I went in the navy, I lived on a great, salt bay—like a sea, really—and I never remember the time I did not know how to manage a boat."

Musa's reply to this was a little discouraging.

"No doubt your excellency can manage a boat. But, generally, the officers of a big ship do not know how to manage a little boat. They seem to think they can do as much with a small boat as with a big ship, and they can't."

"Musa," said Archy, presently, "I have read something of the history of the Moors in Spain. What great fellows for fighting were those Moors! I dare say some of your ancestors were chieftains there."

"Yes," answered Musa, proudly, "and they did not yield to the Spaniards—they died fighting. Only the women and children were left alive."

Archy having found a subject dear to Musa's heart, lost no time in cultivating it. When he had exhausted all he knew about the Moors in Spain, he left Musa, and, going up into the town, begged and borrowed the few books in the garrison that treated of the Moors in Spain, and eagerly read them. Every time he met Musa he had a new supply of heroic actions of the Moors to tell about. He got a volume of Shakespeare, and, having mastered the story of Othello, told it very gravely, as an exact and well-authenticated history of the dependence of the state of Venice upon a Moorish commander. Musa was a man of character and abilities, but he had a tremendous supply of racial vanity, and Archy's artful praises of his country bore fruit immediately. Within a week Musa had agreed to take him on a trip to Tetuan, across the Straits, which he was planning for the first dark night. General Eliot's consent had to be gained; but after a private interview with him Archy came forth beaming. It had been arranged that two sets of despatches, duly authenticated and sealed, should be prepared—but one set was bogus. If captured, Musa and Archy were to frankly confess they were carrying despatches, and give up the bogus ones, and offer to get more if allowed to return to Gibraltar. This stratagem seemed so likely to succeed that both Archy and Musa were eager to be off, and two nights afterwards a cloudy sky and a moonless night saw them both in a small cutter belonging to the Enterprise, bound for the African side.

Archy had persuaded Musa to take the English boat instead of the unwieldy tub with a huge lateen-sail with which the Moor was familiar, and with the one sail and the jib Archy felt capable of sailing to America if necessary. True, the cutter was of a build and rig unusual in the Mediterranean, and might excite suspicion on that account; but Archy, like a true sailor, preferred to take his chances in something that the wind could drive along than to the foreign boats, which he regarded with unmixed contempt. Under Captain Curtis's advice he put on the jacket and trousers of a Maltese sailor with a red fez, and about eleven o'clock at night they set sail for the African coast.

The current which sets through the Straits was in their favor, as they were bound for Tetuan, about forty miles in a straight line from Gibraltar. Their great danger lay in running across the Spanish vessels, which cruised incessantly up and down the Straits, but the blockade was not then as strict as it afterwards became. They had a lantern with them, but carefully refrained from showing a light.

As they sailed along under a lowering sky—rare at that season—they frequently saw the lights of the Spanish cruisers, but they handled the boat so skilfully that they were not once hailed, much less overhauled. A sense of joy filled Archy's heart when he found himself again on the sea; and seeing his perfect familiarity with the boat Musa allowed him to manage it, only giving an occasional hint about the currents, with which Archy was unfamiliar. The wind did not fail them during the whole night, and next day, on a brilliant forenoon, they were off the old walled town of Tetuan, with its flanking towers showing clear against the glorious blue of an African sky.

They sailed into the harbor and landed on a rickety old mole, crowded with Moors, Berbers, Arabs, and Jews. The British still maintained a consulate there, chiefly for the chance of communicating with Gibraltar, and, as soon as they landed, Archy went to the Consul's house. It was a low building, with many pillars, after the Moorish fashion, and under the quaint colonnade sat the Consul in a linen jacket and slippers, taking his noonday coffee.

When the handsome young Maltese sailor, as Archy looked to be, with a bag of letters over his shoulder, walked up to him in true Anglo-Saxon fashion, and said, "Good-morning, sir," the Consul nearly fell off his chair with surprise. But Archy soon made known who he was, and was very warmly greeted. The Consul eagerly asked his news and despatches, and when he found out that the Rock was well provisioned and the garrison was more indomitable than ever, he said:

"I will call the chiefs and principal men of the town together to-morrow, that I may tell them your story—for their respect for England and English rights will be very much increased thereby; and, meanwhile, you must be my guest."

Archy was only too happy to accept, and spent the next twenty-four hours chiefly in gobbling oranges—the first fruit he had seen for months—and galloping up and down the environs of the town on a vicious donkey, with which he had several disagreements, that invariably ended in the donkey pitching him heels-over-head. But Archy did not mind a little thing like that, and was always ready to tackle the donkey again.

Next day a great assemblage of Tetuan notabilities met at the Consul's house, and while sitting around a tinkling fountain in the court-yard, with coffee, sherbet, and pipes, the Consul, seated in the middle, with Archy on one side and Musa on the other, began the story of the failure of the Spanish, so far, to capture Gibraltar. He spoke in Italian, which is the lingua franca of that region, and frequently turned to Archy and Musa for confirmation. Archy did not know a word of the lingua franca, but he nodded his head gravely whenever the Consul turned to him with a note of inquiry in his voice.

The chiefs and notabilities sat silent and attentive, puffing at their pipes; and it was plain that they were deeply impressed by what they heard. The confabulation broke up after several hours, and Archy returned to his amusement of stuffing oranges and riding donkeys.

The Consul took a day or two to make up his despatches, and to get together the few and scant letters and despatches that he had received for the garrison by merchant-ships and such stray means of communication. They were concealed in oranges, hollowed out for the purpose, and put in a bag which was carefully stowed away in the cutter. As fresh fruit was not only the greatest luxury but the greatest necessity of the Gibraltar garrison, in which scurvy had appeared, the cutter was filled with as much as she could carry without impeding her sailing qualities—and then came the waiting for a dark night.

But the nights refused to grow dark, and, emboldened by their success in eluding the Spanish cruisers before, both Archy and Musa, on the third evening, determined to take the chances, and, the wind being fair, they sailed in the afternoon for Gibraltar.

Bright as was the night, and white as was their sail, it seemed as though they would slip through the blockading fleet as easily as they had six nights before. They passed several Spanish cruisers, and were hailed more than once; but their boat was so small, and holding only two men, no further effort was made to stop them. About two o'clock in the morning, when it really began to grow dark, and they were not more than ten miles from Gibraltar in a straight line, they found themselves unexpectedly close to a Spanish gun-brig. They were hailed, and, as before, paid no attention, and continued on their tack. The brig, however, put about and came after them, emphasizing her desire to speak with them by firing a blank cartridge at them. It was then high time to take some notice of it, but instead of heaving to they tacked for the brig, and in a few minutes were alongside. The Spanish officer of the deck, leaning over the rail, called out:

"Who are you?"

"Let me come aboard and I will tell you," replied Musa.

In another minute he was on board, leaving Archy to hold the boat.

Archy could not catch the conversation between Musa and the Spanish lieutenant, but he saw Musa show the bogus despatches, then both went below and remained ten minutes, evidently in the captain's cabin. They came on deck again, and Musa had a little bag in his hand, and a letter. He swung himself into the cutter, the lieutenant and one or two of the watch called out "Good-bye!" and immediately they were proceeding in opposite directions.

Musa stowed his bag away carefully, and then, in response to Archy's eager questions, said:

"He gave me fifty doubloons for my despatches, and a letter to the commanding officer of any Spanish vessel that may stop us, telling them to let us pass into Gibraltar, as we have brought them valuable news and may bring more."

"Hurrah!" cried Archy, under his breath.

But they were not stopped any more, and under cover of darkness they again slipped into Gibraltar Bay. About a mile from the nearest point of debarkation they were chased by a Spaniard, but a battery near by opened fire vigorously, and under cover of the cannonade they landed. It was then after sunrise, and the firing had roused the garrison.

As soon as they landed they went to headquarters, accompanied by a number of officers, including Captain Curtis and Langton and a crowd of other persons.

When they were in General Eliot's presence Musa motioned to Archy to speak, and Archy motioned to Musa—so there was silence.

"Will you proceed, Mr. Baskerville?" asked General Eliot.

Archy, thus adjured, gave an account of the trip, and produced the letters and despatches.

Then Musa, with great dignity, laid the little bag of doubloons down on the table.

"Excellency, I was afraid to refuse them, but I do not consider the money mine," he said.

"Then whose is it?" asked General Eliot.

"I, as an officer, can take none of it," replied Archy, quickly.

"Musa, it is yours," said General Eliot, "and it does not half repay what you have done for us. As for you, Mr. Baskerville, I can only say that now, more than ever, we regard you as a friend instead of an enemy—a guest instead of a prisoner."