CHAPTER I.

       Table of Contents

      I trust that, before relating the important events of which I have been an eye-witness, I may be allowed to say a few words about my early life and to explain the singular accidents and circumstances which resulted in my being present at our great naval catastrophe.

      In speaking of my birth I cannot follow the example of most writers who narrate the facts of their own lives, and who begin by naming their ancestry—usually of noble rank, hidalgos at the very least, if not actually descended from some royal or imperial progenitor. I cannot grace my opening page with high-sounding names, for, excepting my mother whom I remember for some few years, I know nothing of any of my forefathers, unless it be Adam from whom my descent would seem to be indisputable. In short, my history began in much the same way as that of Pablos, the brigand of Segovia; happily it pleased God that it should resemble it in no other particular.

      I was born at Cadiz in the notorious quarter “de la Viña,” which was not then, any more than at the present day, a good school of either morals or manners. My memory does not throw any light on the events of my infancy till I was six years old, and I remember that, only because I associate the idea of being six with an event I heard much talked about, the battle of Cape St. Vincent, which took place in 1797.

      Endeavoring to see myself as I was at that time, with the curiosity and interest which must attach to self-contemplation, I am aware of a dim and hazy little figure in the picture of past events, playing in the creek with other small boys of the same age, more or less. This was to me the whole of life—as it was, at any rate, to our privileged class; those who did not live as I did appeared to me exceptional beings. In my childish ignorance of the world I firmly believed that man was made for the sea, Providence having created him to swim as being the noblest exercise of his limbs and body, and to dive for crabs as the highest use of his intelligence—and especially to fish up and sell the highly-esteemed crustacean known as Bocas de la Isla—as well as for his personal delectation and enjoyment, thus combining pleasure with profit.

      The society into which I was born was indeed of the roughest, as ignorant and squalid as can well be imagined; so much so that the boys of our quarter of the town were regarded as even lower than those of the adjoining suburb of Puntales, whose occupations were the same and who defied the elements with equal devilry; the result of this invidious distinction was that each party looked upon the other as rivals, and the opposing forces would meet from time to time for a pitched battle with stones, when the earth was stained with heroic blood.

      When I was old enough to begin to think that I might go into business on my own account, with a view to turning an honest penny, I remember that my sharpness stood me in good stead on the quay where I acted as valet de place to the numerous English who then, as now, disembarked there. The quay was a free academy peculiarly fitted to sharpen the wits and make the learner wide-awake, and I was not one of the least apt of its disciples in that wide branch of human experience; nor did I fail to distinguish myself in petty thefts, especially of fruit, an art for which the Plaza de San Juan offered an ample field, both for the experiments of the beginner and the exploits of the adept. But I have no wish to enlarge on this part of my history, for I blush with shame now, as I remember the depth to which I had sunk, and I thank God for having released me from it at an early period, and directed me into a better path.

      Among the impressions which remain most vivid in my memory is the enthusiastic delight I felt at the sight of vessels of war, when they anchored outside Cadiz or in the cove of San Fernando. As I had no means of satisfying my curiosity, when I saw these enormous structures I conceived the most absurd and fanciful ideas about them, imagining them as full of mysteries.

      Always eager to mimic the greater world around us, we boys too had our squadrons of little ships, roughly hewn in wood, with sails of paper or of rag, which we navigated with the greatest deliberation and gravity in the pools of Puntales or La Caleta. To make all complete, whenever a few coppers came into our hands, earned by one or another of our small industries, we bought powder of old “Aunt Coscoja” in the street “del Torno de Santa María,” and with this we could have a grand naval display. Our fleets sailed before the wind in an ocean three yards across, fired off their cannon, came alongside of each other to mimic a hand-to-hand fight—in which the imaginary crews valiantly held their own, and swarmed into the tops unfurling the flag, made of any scrap of colored rag we could pick up in a dust-heap—while we danced with ecstasy on the shore at the popping of the artillery, imagining ourselves to be the nationalities represented by our respective standards, and almost believing that in the world of grown-up men and great events the nations too would leap for joy, looking on at the victories of their splendid fleets. Boys see things through strange windows.

      Those were times of great sea-fights, for there was one at least every year and a skirmish every month. I thought that fleets met in battle simply and solely because they enjoyed it, or to prove their strength and valor, like two bullies who meet outside the walls to stick knives into each other. I laugh when I recollect the wild ideas I had about the persons and events of the time. I heard a great deal about Napoleon and how do you think I had pictured him to myself! In every respect exactly like the smugglers whom we not