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Our path wound round the hills and dipped towards the sea. From the stretches of heather through which we brushed we could hear below us the surf breaking on the rocks: it might have been a corner of the west coast of Scotland. After eight miles' up-and-down tramp, the lighthouse at the end of the great cape, Spartel, the north-west corner of the African Continent, came into sight.
We were much together, Basil and I; we walked together, exploring the recesses of the native town, and the ancient citadel, with its memories of British dominion; we lingered in the Soko or native market, crowded with wild creatures from the far interior; we rode together, for his first care was to secure horses, and scoured the country as far as the Marshan and Cape Spartel.
The principal day's excursion from Tangier is out to Cape Spartel and back again: before we left the place we started early one morning with this end in view, taking a donkey and boy carrying a camera, lunch, etc. first along a cobbled roadway of which Tangier is immensely proud, across the river by a new bridge, and up the Mountain.
On the 18th July he sighted Cape Spartel, and any sailor will say that no grass had been allowed to grow under the bottoms of the ships that made so quick a passage. But Nelson was "sorrowful" that no results had accrued. Like a strong man who has opinions and carries them through to the bitter end, he did not "blame himself."
This sudden resolve of Oliver-Reis created no little excitement aboard the galleys. The corsairs knew nothing of navigation upon the open seas, none of them had ever been beyond the Mediterranean, few of them indeed had ever voyaged as far west as Cape Spartel, and it is doubtful if they would have followed any other leader into the perils of the open Atlantic.
But those who live out in the Mountain and visitors to Spartel have nothing to fear in these days in the shape of attack and robbery. It was about ten o'clock when we left behind us the leggy remains of a Roman aqueduct over the river, and, having climbed the Mountain, broke into open ground, stretching far away at the top.
Well, at last, we found that the French had left the West Indies for Europe, so back across the Atlantic we steered, but though we knew we were close astern of them, they kept ahead of us, and at last we sighted Cape Spartel, and anchored the next day at Gibraltar. "I know it for a fact, that it only wanted ten days of two years since Lord Nelson himself had last set his foot on shore.
King of Algiers, de facto King of Tunis, Admiralissimo to Soliman the Magnificent, his name a portent in Christendom, his fame reaching from Spartel to Tunis, and from the shores of France to the foothills of the Atlas, Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa was at the height of his power. Never before had a corsair risen to such eminence, never again was there destined to be so magnificent a sea-robber.
This lighthouse was built at the instigation of the eleven Powers, but actually by the Sultan. The Powers Great Britain, France, Germany, Spain, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, Italy, Russia, America, and Brazil share the cost of its maintenance, and that of the whole road from Tangier to the lighthouse, which follows the line of telegraph-posts, the cable being laid to Spartel.
He notified Collingwood and his other subordinates, that if the enemy came out, he should stand for Cape Spartel, the African outpost of the Straits, to bar the entrance of the allies to the Mediterranean.
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