"April 15, 1781.--Yesterday I met a soldier singing in the street with uncommon glee, notwithstanding the enemy were firing with prodigious warmth, 'A soldier's life is a merry life, From care and trouble free.' He ran to me with eagerness, and presenting his bottle, cried: 'D----n me if I don't like fighting, with plenty of good liquor for carrying away. 'Why, Jack,' says I, 'what have you been about?' 'Faith,' says he, 'I scarce know myself. I have been constantly, on foot and watch, half-starved and without money, facing a parcel of pitiful Spaniards. I have been fighting, wheeling, marching, counter-marching, sometimes with a firelock, sometimes with a handspike, and now with my bottle.' "A shell that instant burst, a piece of which knocked the bottle out of his hand. 'Jack,' says I, 'are you not thankful to God for your preservation?' 'How do you mean?' says he; 'fine talking of God with a soldier whose trade and occupation is cutting throats. Divinity and slaughter sound very well together; they jingle like a cracked bell in the hands of a noisy crier. My religion is a firelock, open touch-hole, good flint, well-rammed charge, and seventy rounds: this is military creed. Come, comrade, drink!'" Such license as this would soon demoralize the best troops in the world. Had the Spaniards known the degree to which it existed at that moment, and been able to effect an entrance into the fortress, Gibraltar might have been lost. The insubordination was suppressed only by the most strenuous efforts of the Governor and the vigorous enforcement of discipline. An order was issued that any soldier caught marauding should be "executed _immediately_," and this summary judgment was put in force in several cases, where men were not only executed without a moment's delay, but on the very spot where the crime was committed. This timely severity, with the personal influence of the Governor, at length brought the soldiers to their senses, and order was restored. Perhaps they were brought back to duty in part by the continued roar of that terrific bombardment, for in a true soldier nothing rouses the martial spirit like the sound of the enemy's guns. Danger and duty go together: and many of those who had been carried away by this temporary frenzy, when they "came to themselves," were among the bravest who fought in the conflicts that were yet to come.