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Before sundown a canoe was making off to us, but after sunset we gradually lost sight of it, and some time after this we anchored. Tuesday, 26th December, 1848. At twenty minutes to six A.M., got underweigh with a light breeze; in the centre of Hannibal Bay, Risk Point ahead.
At two p.m. we accordingly passed the Isle of May, at six anchored in Leith Roads, and at eight the writer landed, when he came in upon his friends, who were not a little surprised at his unexpected appearance, which gave an instantaneous alarm for the safety of things at the Bell Rock.
We sat down at once, and as I helped the chief mate, I said: "Are you aware that there is a ship anchored inside the islands? I saw her mastheads above the ridge as the sun went down." He raised sharply his simple face, overcharged by a terrible growth of whisker, and emitted his usual ejaculations: "Bless my soul, sir! You don't say so!"
"There is nothing to hinder that I know of," said my companion. "Memory and imagination as you know them in the flesh are two winged creatures with strings tied to their legs, and anchored to a bodily weight of a hundred and fifty pounds, more or less. When the string is cut you can be where you wish to be, not merely a part of you, leaving the rest behind, but the whole of you.
In fact, the sloop-of-war "Hunter" was anchored in the stream not far off. This time, again, the sentry let them pass. In a few moments they rounded the headland above the Anse du Foulon. There was no sentry there. The strong current swept the boats of the light infantry a little below the intended landing-place.
The wind still blew with violence, and although the ship lay in water as smooth as a mill-pond, the narrow strip of open ocean visible from her decks was whipped foaming white with its violence. In their conversation with the master, the natives had told him that at a village some miles away from where the Triton was anchored, there was a white man and his wife living French people, so they said.
And lo, in middle course a band of his own fellow-voyagers meets him, the nymphs whom bountiful Cybele had bidden be gods of the sea, and turn to nymphs from ships; they swam on in even order, and cleft the flood, as many as erewhile, brazen-plated prows, had anchored on the beach.
After a refit and taking on board six months’ provisions and stores, as we were ordered to fit foreign, our signal was made to proceed to sea under sealed orders, taking with us a sloop of war. On the tenth day we anchored in Funchal Roads, Madeira, with our consort.
In 1687, it was plundered again; and in the next year Andros, then royal governor, anchored before it in his frigate, the "Rose," landed with his attendants, and stripped the building of all it contained, except a small altar with pictures and ornaments, which they found in the principal room.
To conceal their vessels when anchored just inside an inlet, the privateersmen would stand slim pine trees beside the masts and thus very effectively concealed the rigging from British cruisers prowling along the shore.
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