, watching
the event with an anxious eye, though his anxiety was from the opposite
cause to that of most of the spectators. The arrival of supplies would
at once bring down the price of provisions, and rob him, for the
present, of his expected profits; and as each successive rumour obtained
credence with the crowd, his countenance brightened as their hopes fell,
and sank as they again emerged from despondency.

Not far from him was an old Genoese woman, wearing the quaint red cloak,
trimmed with black velvet, that old Genoese women usually wear in
Gibraltar. She hovered round the skirts of the crowd, occasionally
peering beneath an uplifted arm, or thrusting it between two obstructing
figures to catch a glimpse, though it was evident that her dim eyes
would fail to discern the fleet when it should come in view. Her thin
shrivelled features, relieved against her black hood, were positively
wolfish from starvation. She frequently drew one hand from beneath her
cloak, and gazed at something she held in it--then, muttering, she would
again conceal it. My grandfather's curiosity was roused. He drew near
and watched for the reappearance of the object that so engrossed her. It
was a blue mouldy crust of bread.

The wished-for spectacle was at length revealed. "As the sun became more
powerful," says Drinkwater, rising into positive poetry with the
occasion, "the fog gradually rose, _like the curtain of a vast theatre_,
discovering to the anxious garrison one of the most beautiful and
pleasing scenes it is possible to conceive. The convoy, consisting of
near a hundred vessels, were in a compact body, led by several
men-of-war--their sails just filled enough for steerage, while the
majority of the line-of-battle ships lay to under the Barbary shore,
having orders not to enter the bay, lest the enemy should molest them
with their fireships."

Then rose a great shout--at once the casting-off of long-pressing
anxiety and the utterance of delight. Happy tears streamed down haggard
faces overgrown with hair, and presently men turned to one another,
smiling in the face of a stranger neighbour as in that of an old
friend, while a joyful murmur, distilled from many languages, rose
upward. Assuredly, if blessings are of any avail, the soul of Admiral
Darby, who commanded the relieving fleet, is at this moment in Paradise.

Friends and relations now began to search for one another in the crowd,
which broke quickly into knots, each cont