He was still serving at Chatsmouth, his young and beautiful wife the life of the gay garrison, when the war-clouds gathered dark upon the horizon, and, thanks again to the Essendine interest, he found himself transferred, still on the staff, to the expeditionary army under orders for the East.

CHAPTER V.

THE WAR FEVER.

They were stirring times, those early days of ’54.  After half a century of peace the shadow of a great contest loomed dark and near.  The whole British nation, sick and tired of Russian double-dealing, was eager to cut the knot of political difficulty with the sword.  Everyone was mad to fight; only a few optimists, statesmen mostly, still relying on the sedative processes of diplomacy, had any hopes of averting war.  A race reputed peace-loving, but most pugnacious when roused, was stirred now to its very depths.  British hearts beat high throughout the length and breadth of the land, proudly mindful of their former prowess and manfully hopeful of emulating former glorious deeds.

It was the same wherever Englishmen gathered under the old flag; in every corner of the world peopled by offshoots from the old stock, most of all in those strongholds and dependencies beyond sea captured in the old wars, and still held by our arms.

It was so upon the great Rock, the commonly counted impregnable fortress, one of the ancient pillars of Hercules that still stands silently strong and watchful at the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea.

Nowhere did the war fever rage higher than at Gibraltar.  Before everything, a garrison town, battlemented and fortified on every side, resonant from morning gunfire till watch-setting with martial sounds, its principal pageants military, with soldiers filling its streets, and sentinels at every corner, the prospect of active service was naturally the one theme and topic of the place.

As spring advanced, one of those balmy-scented Southern springs when flowers highly prized with us blossomed wild everywhere, even in the fissures of the rock—­when the days are already long and bright, under ever-blue and cloudless skies, Gibraltar realised more fully that war was close at hand.  Lying in the high road to the East, it saw daily the armed strength of England sweep proudly by.  Now a squadron of men-of-war:  not the hideous, shapeless ironclad of to-day, but the traditional three-decker, with its tiers of snarling teeth and its beauty of white-bellying canvas and majestic spar.  Now a troopship with its consorts, two, or three, or more, tightly packed with their living cargo—­whole regiments of red-coated soldiers on their way to Malta and beyond.

Such sights as these kept the garrison—­friends and comrades of those bound eastward—­in a state of constant high-pitched excitement.  At first, forbidden by strict quarantine, there was no communication between the sea and the shore, but all day long there were crowds of idlers ready to line the sea-wall and greet every ship that came in close enough with hearty repeated cheers.  When the vexatious health-rules were relaxed, and troopships landed some of their passengers, there was endless fraternisation, eager discussion of coming operations, and unlimited denunciation of the common foe.