ll do what they can, you may be
sure; but the enemy well know that it is only by starving us out
that they can hope to take the place, and I expect they will put
such a fleet here that it will be mighty difficult for even a boat
to find its way in between them."

"Do you know about the other sieges?" Mrs. O'Halloran asked. "Of
course, I know something about the last siege; but I know nothing
about the history of the Rock before that, and of course Gerald
doesn't know."

"And why should I, Carrie? You don't suppose that when I was at
school, at Athlone, they taught me the history of every bit of rock
sticking up on the face of the globe? I had enough to do to learn
about the old Romans--bad cess to them, and all their bothering
doings!"

"I can tell you about it, Mrs. O'Halloran," Teddy Burke said.
"Bob's professor, who comes to have a talk with me for half an hour
every day, has been telling me all about it; and if Gerald will
move himself, and mix me a glass of grog to moisten my throat, I
will give you the whole story of it.

"You know, no doubt, that it was called Mount Calpe, by Gerald's
friends the Romans; who called the hill opposite there Mount Abyla,
and the two together the Pillars of Hercules. But beyond giving it
a name, they don't seem to have concerned themselves with it; nor
do the Phoenicians or Carthaginians, though all of them had cities
out in the low country.

"It was when the Saracens began to play their games over here that
we first hear of it. Roderic, you know, was king of the Goths, and
seems to have been a thundering old tyrant; and one of his nobles,
Julian--who had been badly treated by him--went across with his
family into Africa, and put up Mousa, the Saracen governor of the
province across there, to invade Spain. They first of all made a
little expedition--that was in 711--with one hundred horse, and
four hundred foot. They landed over there at Algeciras and, after
doing some plundering and burning, sailed back again, with the news
that the country could be conquered. So next year twelve thousand
men, under a chief named Tarik, crossed and landed on the flat
between the Rock and Spain. He left a party here to build the
castle; and then marched away, defeated Roderic and his army at
Xeres, and soon conquered the whole of Spain, except the mountains
of the north.

"We don't hear much more of Gibraltar for another six hundred
years. Algeciras had become a fortress of great strength a