Rock a martial red, or the moonlight softens it, and you see only the tall palms and the graceful balconies and the gardens of plants, and each rampart becomes a terrace and each casemate a balcony. Or at night, when the lamps are lit, you might imagine yourself on the stage of a theatre, walking in a scene set for _Fra Diavolo_. There are no such streets or houses outside of stage-land. It is only in stage cities that the pavements and streets are so conspicuously clean, or that the hanging lamps of beaten iron-work throw such deep shadows, or that there are such high, heavily carved Moorish doorways and mysterious twisting stairways in the solid rock, or shops with such queer signs, or walls plastered with such odd-colored placards--streets where every footfall echoes, and where dark figures suddenly appear from narrow alleyways and cry "Halt, there!" at you, and then "All's well" as you pass by. [Illustration: GIBRALTAR AS SEEN ACROSS THE NEUTRAL GROUND] Gibraltar has one main street running up and clinging to the side of the hill from the principal quay to the most southern point of the Rock. Houses reach up to it from the first level of the ramparts, and continue on up the hill from its other side. On this street are the bazars of the Moors, and the English shops and the Spanish cafes, and the cathedral, and the hotels, and the Governor's house, and every one in Gibraltar is sure to appear on it at least once in the twenty-four hours. But the color and tone of the street are military. There are soldiers at every step--soldiers carrying the mail or bearing reports, or soldiers in bulk with a band ahead, or soldiers going out to guard the North Front, where lies the Neutral Ground, or to target practice, or to play football; soldiers in two or threes, with their sticks under their arms, and their caps very much cocked, and pipes in their mouths. But these make slow progress, for there is always an officer in sight--either a boy officer just out from England riding to the polo field near the Neutral Ground, or a commanding officer in a black tunic and a lot of ribbons across his breast, or an officer of the day with his sash and sword; and each of these has to be saluted. This is an interesting spectacle, and one that is always new. You see three soldiers coming at you with a quick step, talking and grinning, alert and jaunty, and suddenly the upper part of their three bodies becomes rigid, though their legs continue as before, apparently of their own volition, and their hands go up and their pipes and grins disappear, and they pass you with eyes set like dead men's eyes, and palms facing you as though they were trying to learn which way the wind was blowing. This is due, you discover, to the passing of a stout gentleman in knickerbockers, who switches his rattan stick in the air in reply. Sometimes when he salutes the soldier stops altogether, and so his walks abroad are punctuated at every twenty yards. It takes