When this episode occurred, Cape Espartel was bearing south-east of us, about twelve miles distant; and by our glasses we could distinctly see the features of that remarkable headland of Morocco, the north-western extremity of the mighty continent of Africa, with its range of basaltic columns, which nearly rival in magnificence those of Fingal’s Cave at Staffa; and the noon of the following day, as we bore into the Mediterranean, saw the great peak of Gibraltar rising from the horizon like a couchant lion, with its tail turned to Spain. When my poor nag, previous to its slaughter, was being slung up from the hold, Beverley was much impressed by the real grief of honest Pitblado for its loss; and told me an interesting Indian anecdote of a pet horse that belonged to the 8th Royal Irish Hussars. Beverley seldom spoke of India, for it was a land that was not without sorrowful recollections to him; and we all knew that he wore at his neck a large gold locket, containing a braid of the hair of his intended bride—a lovely girl, who was shot in his arms, and when seated on his saddle, as he was spurring with his troop through the horrors and the carnage of the Khyber Pass—on that day when nearly our whole 44th Regiment perished—and poor Beverley, with her dead body, fell into the hands of the Afghans. "When we last went out to India," said he, "that was when I was but a cornet of sixteen, and several years before you joined us, we relieved the 8th Royal Irish, who had been there long—I know not how many years, but time enough to gain on their colours _Pristinæ virtutis memores_, with ’Leswaree,’ and ’Hindostan’—honours which they shared with the old 25th Light Dragoons,[*] for five-and-twenty years was then the common term of Indian expatriation. [*] A corps disbanded in 1818; and formerly the 29th Light Dragoons, were raised in 1795. "The 8th had been at the storming of Kalunga, where their old and beloved colonel—then General Sir Robert Rollo Gillespie—was killed at their head, and fell with that splendid sword, inscribed ’The gift of the Royal Irish,’ clenched in his hand. His horse was a remarkably noble animal, which had been foaled of an Irish mare at the Cape of Good Hope; but he had the beautiful Arabian head, the finely-arched neck, long oblique shoulders, ample quarters, well-bent legs, and long elastic pastern of his sire—a splendid Godolphin barb. Black Bob was indeed a beauty! "After the affair at Kalunga he was put up for sale, with his saddle and housings still spotted with the blood of the gallant Gillespie, who was so greatly beloved by the brave Irish fellows of the 8th that they resolved to keep his horse as a memorial of him; but, unfortunately, the upset price was three hundred guineas.