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The land was made out ahead and then on the starboard bow. It was the island of Oleron, forming the south side of Basque Roads. There was no longer any hope of bringing the enemy to action, still the "Imperious" stood on. The chase was seen to bring up under a strong fort, below which several line-of-battle ships and two frigates were at anchor.

Why, I remember way back yonder in the 'seventies how I was always tryin' to persuade a woman with a skinny figure not to wear a cuirass basque and a woman with a stout figure not to put on a draped polonaise. I got to know better presently, and you will, too, before you've been at it much longer.

The French called the country the newly found lands, an appellation which survives in that of the largest island. It is stated on the authority of certain old chroniclers, that the islands off the mainland had been known more than a century before the era of Columbus and Cabot to sailors from the Basque Provinces, who named them "Bacallos," their term for cod-fish.

It was a sort of greenish cabriolet, and its driver, a fat fellow of about thirty, with the usual Basque cap on his head, was smoking a cigarette whilst waiting to be hired. Perched sideways on the seat with his knees wide apart, he drove them on with the tranquil indifference of a well-fed man who considers himself the master of the street.

The difficulty was to find competent persons to take charge of the fireships, so as to kindle them at the proper moment the want of which had rendered most of the fireships ineffective as such in the affair of Basque Roads in 1809, and had formed one of the principal obstacles when attacking Callao in 1821.

He passed along the shady avenue, and the house door was opened to him by a Basque maid-servant, who led him to the drawing-room. Here, in a dim light which filtered through the interstices of shutters, sat the lady of the house alone. "Is it Mr. Warburton?" she asked, rising feebly, and speaking in a thin, fatigued, but kindly voice. "So kind of you to come.

Now I am sorry, since he was so kind, that I did not get him to read me the Basque inscription on the front of his bank, which looked exactly like that on the bank at Bayonne; I should not have understood it, but I should have known what it sounded like, if it sounded like anything but Basque. Everybody in San Sebastian seemed resolved to outdo every other in kindness.

Irish and Basque are, as we have said, kindred languages. The Basque woman's hair was scented with onions and basil. The skipper of the hooker was a Basque of Guipuzcoa. One sailor was a Basque of the northern slope of the Pyrenees, the other was of the southern slope that is to say, they were of the same nation, although the first was French and the latter Spanish.

Whilst in conversation with Mr Sothern, Sir George Villiers' private secretary, Borrow's Basque servant Francisco rushed in with the news that the alguazils were again at his rooms searching among his papers, whereat Borrow at once left the Embassy, determined to return to his lodgings.

One of the papers gives this description: "Miss Anthony was fashionably dressed in black silk with demi-train, basque with flowing sleeves, heavily trimmed in black lace; ruffled white lace undersleeves and a broad, graceful lace collar; with a gold neck chain and pendant. Her abundant hair was brushed back and bound in a knot after the fashion of our grandmothers."