On this occasion the dread news was broken by picking up an anonymous letter giving the particulars of the coming disturbance. Then came a very confidential message from a patient in the hospital whom I visited and who gave me some startling news. A deep laid conspiracy was afoot to rise while at work in a distant quarry, to overmaster warders and military guards and march straight on board the admiralty brig employed to remove the heavily laden lighters from the quarry. To cast her loose would be the work of a moment, and with steam up she might be taken across the bay before the alarm could be given and pursuit organised. The whole story seemed far-fetched but I could not ignore the warning. Upon my requisition to the military authorities, the guards were reinforced. They loaded ostentatiously before marching to the quarry, and on arrival there it was found that the steam tug was absent on some other duty. There was no outbreak, nor the semblance of one. The turbulent spirits were cowed at this exhibition of formidable strength, if indeed there were any who had contemplated mischief. I must add a few words to the general description of the personnel of the Gibraltar convict prisoners. They were interesting to me, many of them as the survivors of the great tide of criminal exiles that turned for years toward the antipodes. They were to be easily recognised by those who had the key; their swarthy, weather-beaten complexions spoke of long exposure to trying climates. They were hardy in aspect, with muscular, well-knit frames, developed by much manual labour in the open air. They had the bold, self-reliant, reckless demeanour of men who had endured severe discipline and passed through it unbroken. They were hard, bitter men, who had faced the worst and were willing to do it again. Quarrelsome and of hasty temper, they might be cowed into good order, but were ever ready to break out and resist authority, to assault a warder or strike down a fellow convict with pick or shovel, or the first weapon that lay to hand. The type was entirely new to me then, and indeed I have seen little of it since, for they were a fast vanishing species and are to be met with no more in the prison population.