"Oh! deuce take the champagne, and all that sort of thing," said Jack, looking still at the guarda costa. For a time an evident confusion and indecision, seemed to reign among her crew. She lay heaving and tossing, rising and falling on the long and ridgy rollers, with the setting sun glaring full upon her white mainsail, which lay flat to the mast; the light of day soon sank in the west, behind the upper peak of the rocky mountain, from which a myriad rays shot upward and played on the masses of floating cloud; the strait was still bathed in the amber glory of evening, and each glassy billow of the slow ground-swell as it rolled away from west to east, rose like a bank of gold from a plain of brilliant blue; and all the amphitheatre of the town, which stretches along the base of the rock, and rises gradually from the shore in the most delightful manner--mingling in picturesque confusion, the lofty and airy Spanish caza, with its flat roof, verandah, and sun-shaded windows, the close, compact English house, the solid rampart, and the flimsy wooden storehouse--all were bathed in the warmest tints, and every casement and window flung back the gleams of radiance, as if they had been illuminated by lamps of crimson and gold. Soon after the departed sun had shed its last ray on the bare scalp of the sugar-loaf, the crew of the guarda costa, as a protection probably, hoisted British colours, and crept past us into the harbour, and immediately on dropping her anchor, sent a boat ashore. We supposed that this visit could only be for the purpose of lodging a complaint against the officer in command at the New Mole Fort--to wit myself, a complaint which we knew would be unavailing: but we were mistaken; for my servant, on returning from the barracks with the bottle of champagne and other &c. requisite to enable Jack and me to pass the night on guard agreeably, brought us the unpleasant information that the shot had carried away both legs of the unfortunate Spanish lieutenant who commanded the guarda costa, and that doctor M'Leechy of "Ours" had at once gone off to the vessel to succour the patient, who--poor fellow!--had died under his hands. This catastrophe proved a great damper to us, and to Jack in particular, for he was one of the best-hearted fellows in the service; so we had more champagne brought from the mess-house, and we talked of the guarda costa and her poor lieutenant almost till the morning gun was fired; and the affair furnished me with a special paragraph for that "column of remarks" in the guard report which seldom contains memoranda of greater importance than a notice of "the cracked pane of glass, handed over by Captain O'Brien of the 88th;" or, "the poker, handed over, broken, by the last guard under Lieutenant Smith, of the Buffs," and so forth.