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On the evening of the 27th of April, they were lying to off Puerto Cabello, preparing to land, and sure of success, when they made out two Spanish guardacostas close in shore, beating up to windward. Miranda thought them unworthy of attention, and gave the order to stand in. But the pilot mistook the landmarks, owing to the darkness, and missed the point agreed upon for landing.
While he sat sipping his liqueur in the tiny cabin, Dominic plied him with questions as to the whereabouts of the guardacostas. The preventive service afloat was really the one for us to reckon with, and it was material for our success and safety to know the exact position of the patrol craft in the neighbourhood. The news could not have been more favourable.
But, after a long week of keenest anxiety, intelligence arrived that Milsom had succeeded in eluding the guardacostas, and had landed his cargo in a small cove under the lee of San Domingo Point, on the south coast; and that the moiety of that cargo asked for by Don Hermoso was even then well on its way to the estate.
When the Spanish Guardacostas seize upon one of these vessels, they make no scruple of confiscating the cargo and of treating the crew in a manner little better than pirates." From all this, the shortcomings of the Spanish attempts at a protective system are sufficiently evident.
The Bacchus was sent in to reconnoitre and did not return, although signals of recall were repeated throughout the night. About midnight signals were noticed passing between the fort at Puerto Cabello and the guardacostas; Captain Lewis beat to quarters, and kept his men at their guns until morning.
For want of more exalted adversaries Dominic turned his audacity fertile in impious stratagems against the powers of the earth, as represented by the institution of Custom-houses and every mortal belonging thereto scribes, officers, and guardacostas afloat and ashore. He was the very man for us, this modern and unlawful wanderer with his own legend of loves, dangers, and bloodshed.
Dollars of mine were tacking off the shores of Mexico, in peril of the deep and the guardacostas; they rang on saloon counters in the city of Tombstone, Arizona; they shone in faro-tents among the mountain diggings: the imagination flagged in following them, so wide were they diffused, so briskly they span to the turning of the wizard's crank.
We learnt a few days afterwards, from a New Providence privateer, that they were three guardacostas, as the captain of her called them—in other words, Spanish government vessels, commanded by lieutenants, well armed, manned and equipped. We joined the ship next morning, and gave a Flemish account of our cruise. One of the wounded men, through loss of blood, died soon after coming on board.
The guardacostas soon took possession of both, and carried their prizes, with sixty prisoners, into Puerto Cabello, before the eyes of their astonished and indignant comrades, who could not understand such a want of courage or conduct on the part of their chief.
For anything which in the late discussion has appeared, the war is entirely collateral to the state of Jacobinism, as truly a foreign war to us and to all our home concerns as the war with Spain in 1739, about Guardacostas, the Madrid Convention, and the fable of Captain Jenkins's ears.
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