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"I have told all my news, Carrie. Now I want to hear yours. The Spaniards haven't began to batter down the Rock, yet?" "We have been very quiet, Bob. On the 11th a great convoy, of about sixty sail protected by five xebecs, of from twenty to thirty guns each came along. They must have come out from Malaga, the very night you passed there.
Fish was equally dear; and vegetables hardly to be bought, at any price. Flour was running very short, and rice was served out instead of it. On the 14th of November the privateer Buck, armed with twenty-four 9 pounders, was seen making into the bay. Two Spanish ships of the line, a frigate, two xebecs, and twenty-one small craft set out to intercept her.
Extremely slow was my advance, for at first I would not leave any ship, however remotely small, without approaching sufficiently to investigate her, at least with the spy-glass: and a strange multitudinous mixture of species they were, trawlers in hosts, war-ships of every nation, used, it seemed, as passenger-boats, smacks, feluccas, liners, steam-barges, great four-masters with sails, Channel boats, luggers, a Venetian burchiello, colliers, yachts, remorqueurs, training ships, dredgers, two dahabeeahs with curving gaffs, Marseilles fishers, a Maltese speronare, American off-shore sail, Mississippi steam-boats, Sorrento lug-schooners, Rhine punts, yawls, old frigates and three-deckers, called to novel use, Stromboli caiques, Yarmouth tubs, xebecs, Rotterdam flat-bottoms, floats, mere gunwaled rafts anything from anywhere that could bear a human freight on water had come, and was here: and all, I knew, had been making westward, or northward, or both; and all, I knew, were crowded; and all were tombs, listlessly wandering, my God, on the wandering sea with their dead.
"Strange, indeed," replied Lieutenant Procope; "and what appears to me almost as remarkable is that we have never once caught sight either of one of the Maltese tartans or one of the Levantine xebecs that traffic so regularly on the Mediterranean." "Eastwards or westwards," asked the count "which shall be our course? All farther progress to the south is checked."
By the Mole were visible the outlines of barques, steamers, coal-brigs, and xebecs; away to the left were the Catapult and a few of her mosquito companions; and far out rode at anchor a stately frigate of the United States' fleet.
It is believed, that half a dozen frigates, with as many tenders or xebecs, one half of which shall be in cruise, while the other half is at rest, will suffice. The force agreed to be necessary, shall be furnished by the parties, in certain quotas, now to be fixed; it being expected, that each will be willing to contribute, in such proportion as circumstances may render reasonable.
It consisted of two seventy-fours, two frigates, five xebecs, and a number of galleys and small armed vessels. The men-of-war anchored off Algeciras; while the rest of the squadron kept a vigilant patrol at the mouth of the bay, and formed a complete blockade.
Then, one morning, I woke up to find the lugger at anchor in one of the ports of Northern Spain, with dawn just breaking over the olive-trees, and one or two large, queer-looking, lateen-rigged boats, xebecs from Africa, lying close to us. One of them was flying a red flag, and I noticed that our own boat was alongside of her.
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