The old man was loud in praise of Mr. Hay’s proficiency in Arabic, and he smiled and winked when I said that I could wish nothing better for England than that its servants should be dumb. The Algerine government lately assigned this very reason,--proficiency in the Arabic--for appointing one of their creatures as consul at Tangier: a member of the home government answered that that was the very reason why he was the person least qualified. But Algiers has triumphed over Paris. The wind seemed settled from the westward, so I determined to return to Gibraltar to catch the steamer from England, and on the following morning bade adieu to this fancy warehouse of guns and convicts--this military toy-shop and Utopian penal settlement. Just as we were getting into the current, we sprung our gaff, and were fortunately yet near enough to the African shore to regain it. We anchored and repaired the damage out of musket-shot. Had this accident happened an hour afterwards, we should probably not have seen Gibraltar for a week. As soon as we got put to rights and had the Rock “on again,” three points under our lee-bow, I asked one of the idlers to read something out of Mr. Hay’s “Barbary,” and he commenced with this passage. “And that famous Rock has always been a hotbed for engendering mischievous reports which, if connected in any way with Morocco, are sure to find their way over the Straits and thence to the court at Morocco in an exaggerated and distorted form.”[63] There is no escape from this Rock, which, like that of the Arabian Nights, is ever attracting and wrecking you. The first thing I heard of at the beginning of this excursion, was the exasperation produced in Spain by the sinking of their cruiser, and the subsequent discussion respecting the rebuilding of the forts of St. Philip and St. Barbara. I had learnt these circumstances through official persons, I was now come to the other side of the water. Here again from an official person, and this time in a published book, breaks out the disgust and irritation engendered in Morocco. Common fame represents the governor of Gibraltar as having been engaged without measure or disguise, in embroiling the French and the Moors. He and the ambassador from Madrid took the extraordinary step of landing in Morocco at the moment when the appearance of any intermeddling on their part was exactly the thing to drive matters to extremity: they publicly held out encouragement to the Moors. The government at home has declared itself most formally in an opposite sense, and the foreign minister is a man whose word no one ever doubted. The only conclusion, therefore, is that the cabinet is not in the confidence of its agents. It stands to reason that in affairs carried on in secret, the acting hand will be the one which is not seen.