Gibraltar had been saved from the jaws of famine by the arrival of the English fleet. But as soon as it left, the Spanish ships remained masters of the bay, and the blockade was closer than ever. The garrison had had a narrow escape. That it might not be caught so again, the Governor, with his Scotch thrift, put his men upon a new kind of service, quite apart from military duty. The Rock is not wholly barren. There are many nooks and corners that are bright with flowers, and anything that the earth can yield will ripen under that warm southern sky. Accordingly the soldiers, in the intervals of firing the big guns, were put to do a little gardening; and turned patches of ground here and there to cultivation; and where the hillside was too steep, the earth was raised into terraces and banked up with walls, on which they raised small quantities of lettuce or cabbages; so that afterward, although they still suffered for many of the comforts, if not the necessaries, of life, they never came quite so near absolute starvation.
This "home produce" was the more important as the garrison was now to be cut off from its principal resource outside. For a time it had been able to obtain supplies from the Barbary Coast. At first the Moors were all on the side of England, for the Spaniards were their hereditary enemies, who had fought them for hundreds of years, and finally driven them out of Spain, for which the Moors took a pious revenge by thronging the mosques of Tangier to pray that Allah would give the victory to the arms of England! But after a time they saw things in a new light. It could not be Christian charity that softened their hearts toward their old enemies, for they hated the very name of Christian, but some secret influence (was it Spanish gold?) so worked on the mind of the Sultan of Morocco that he became convinced that Allah was on the side of the besiegers--a discovery which he announced in a manner that was not quite in the usual style of diplomatic intercourse. Thus, without any warning,
"A party of black troops that were quartered in the vicinity of Tangier, came to the house of the British Consul, and being introduced, informed him that they had orders from their master to abuse and insult him in the grossest manner, which they immediately put in execution by spitting in his face, seizing him by the collar, and threatening to stab him with their daggers!"