, and died. In 1683 the Merry Monarch caused the works of Tangier to
be blown up, and abandoned the place, declaring it was not worth the
cost of keeping. The Merry Monarch was not prescient. A century
afterwards Gibraltar was indebted for a large proportion of its
supplies, during the great siege, to the dismantled and deserted
British-African fortress. For many reasons Tangier was not to be missed.

By a happy coincidence a party of three in the Club-House Hotel--a
retired army captain, his wife, and a lady companion--were anxious to
take a trip to Africa. We agreed to go together, and had scarcely made
up our minds, when another retired captain, who habitually resided in
Tangier, gratified us by the information that he was returning there,
and would be happy to give us every assistance in his power. Retired
Captain No. 1 was a jolly fellow, fond of good living and not
overburdened with aestheticism--a capital specimen of a hearty
Yorkshireman. He looked after the provand. His wife, portly and short of
temper, was as good-natured as he. She insisted on discharging the
bills. The lady-companion was thin, accomplished, and melancholy. She
kept us in sentiment. Retired Captain No. 2 was a fellow-countryman of
mine, bright-brained and waggish. He was the walking guide-book, with
philosophy and friendship combined. I was nigh forgetting one, and not
by any means the least important, member of the party--Albert. Mrs.
Captain introduced him to me as a sweetly pretty creature. At her
request I looked after him. Tastes vary as to what constitutes beauty,
but I candidly think a broad thick head, crop ears, a flattish nose, and
heavy jowls could not be called sweetly pretty without straining a
point; and all these Albert possessed. He was a bull-dog (I believe his
real name was Bill, and that he had been brought up in Whitechapel). As
a bull-dog he had excellent points, and might be esteemed a model of
symmetry and breeding by the fancy, or even pronounced a beauty and
exquisitely proportioned by connoisseurs; but sweetly pretty--never! I
could not stomach that, especially when Albert growled and laid bare his
ruthless set of sound white teeth.

Before leaving Gibraltar I had two novel sensations, nocturnal and
matutinal. The first was a view of the Bay by moonlight, the white
crescent shining clearly down on a portion of the inner waters brinded
by shipping, and on the outer spread of sleepy, cadenced wavelets
rippling phospho