Another story bearing on the successful revolution inaugurated by Prim is worth relating, as it deals with an episode of Spanish politics which is repeated almost every other year with slender variations. The play is the same; the scene and the _dramatis personæ_ are merely shifted. One of the stereotyped military risings was to be initiated at Algeciras on the arrival of Prim from England. The intimation that he was at hand was to be made by the firing of two rockets from the ship which carried him. On a certain night at the close of August, 1868, two rockets blazed in the sky, and were noticed by the impatient conspirators at Algeciras, who flew to arms to cries of "Down with the Queen," and "Live Prim and Liberty." But no Prim landed. The alarm was premature, the rising a flash in the pan. What they had taken for the bright herald of the advent of "El Paladino" was the signal of a Peninsular and Oriental steamer which had arrived on her passage to Port Said. For the sake of appearances, a number of unfortunate fools were set up against a wall and had their brains blown out in tribute to law and order. But the fruit was ripening. Within little more than a fortnight came the insurrection of the fleet at Cadiz, upon the appearance in that port of the popular hero, and before the end of the month Queen Isabella had fled over the French frontier, never to return to Spain as a sovereign. Prim's plot was attended with a fortune in excess of his most sanguine hopes; he entered Madrid in triumph in October, and was created a Marshal in November. All was joy and enthusiasm, but the hapless tools of ambition who had helped to prepare the way for him below in Algeciras were not of the jubilee.
At first sight the rock looms up large like a frowning inhospitable islet, the stretch of the Neutral Ground being so low that one cannot detect it above the sea-level until almost right upon it. We left the _Vinuesa_ and entered a boat with a couple of sturdy rowers, who offered to pull us across the Bay for five dollars. As I dipped a hand in the brine one of them raised a cry of "Take care!" there were "mala pesca" there. Mr. Shark, who is an ugly customer, had been cruising in the neighbourhood, and had taken a morsel out of an American swimmer a little time before. There were three masts protruding over the water at one spot, the relics of some gallant ship, and index to one of those godsends which the Spanish Government is solicitous to guarantee to the distressed and deserving local fishermen. What a pity it was not the _Murillo_! That would have been poetic retribution.