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An unknown enemy is always a formidable enemy; and I would rather have fought three guarda-costas at once, than lie where we did, in a bay as smooth as a looking-glass, surrounded by forests as silent as a desert, and in a well-armed ship, that was prepared at all points, to meet her foes, even to her boarding-nettings. Nothing came of it all.
When dost mean to sail Master Seadrift?" "With the morning tide. I little like the neighborhood of these meddling guarda-costas." "Bravely answered! Prudence is a cardinal quality in a private trader; and it is a quality that I esteem in Master Skimmer, next to his punctuality Dates and obligations!
The British man-of-war schooner Hawke was overhauled off the Venezuelan coast by two Spanish guarda-costas and compelled to enter the harbor of Cartagena, under alleged orders from the Governor of the colony.
The captains of their armed vessels, known by the name of guarda-costas, had made a practice of boarding and plundering British ships, on pretence of searching for contraband commodities, on which occasions they had behaved with the utmost insolence, cruelty, and rapine.
For several years, the British trade to America, particularly that to the West Indies, had suffered great interruption and annoyance from the Spanish guarda-costas, which, under various pretences, seized the merchant ships, and carried them into their ports, where they were confiscated.
Smuggling on a large scale, consecrated in the practice of both parties by a century of tradition, was met by a coast-guard system, employing numerous small vessels called guarda-costas, which girt the Spanish coasts, but, being powerless to repress effectually over so extensive a shore line, served rather to increase causes of vexation.
Ships-of-war and guarda-costas were instructed, or at least permitted, to stop and search English ships on the high seas, outside of Spanish jurisdiction; and the arrogant Spanish temper, unrestrained by the weak central government, made many of these visits, both the lawful and the unlawful, scenes of insult and even violence.
Not but that the Spaniards had reason to complain in their turn, of the illicit commerce which the English traders from Jamaica and other islands, carried on with their subjects on the continent of South America; though this could not justify the depredations and cruelties which the commanders of the guarda-costas had committed, without provocation or pretence.
For my own part, I neither wished nor expected to see the ship, until we reached the coast of South America, when we might ascertain her position by communicating with the shore. As for the guarda-costas, I knew we could easily elude them, and there might be a small chance of regaining the vessel, something like the way in which we had lost her.
Perfectly well known in Spain also, and to the Spanish Guarda-Costas and Sea-Captains in those parts; who were naturally kept in a perennial state of rage by it, and disposed to fly out into flame upon it, when a bad case turned up! Such a case that of Jenkins had seemed to them; and their mode of treating it, by tearing off Mr.
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