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Eastward, was the gray majesty of the sea, hushed in breathless calm; the horizon line invisibly melting into the monotonous, misty sky; the idle ships shadowy and still on the idle water. Southward, the high ridge of the sea dike, and the grim, massive circle of a martello tower reared high on its mound of grass, closed the view darkly on all that lay beyond.
But upon the memorable 26th of June, 1782, the "Repudiator" sailed out of Havre Roads in a thick fog, under cover of which she entered and cast anchor in Bonchurch Bay, in the Isle of Wight. To surprise the Martello Tower and take the feeble garrison thereunder, was the work of Tom Coxswain and a few of his blue-jackets. The surprised garrison laid down their arms before him.
When it is further remembered that our coasts were defended by batteries and martello towers, that several hundreds of pinnaces and row-boats were ready to attack the flotilla before it could attempt the disembarkation of horses, artillery, and stores, and that 180,000 regulars and militia, aided by 400,000 volunteers, were ready to defend our land, the difficulties even of capturing London will be obvious.
"I will make straight for the Hirondelle when I am done, and send a man to report to you at the old martello tower, where your gang are to meet you. This man can get over to the boat now and warn them to show up, carefully, one by one, and hide around there till dark. Not in the tower itself, for some of the coast-guard roundsmen might take shelter there and pitch into them for smugglers.
There was a singular improvised bivouac going on in the ruined martello tower where Professor Alaric Hobbs had set up his instruments to take some interesting observations upon an occultation of Venus. A coast-guard station at Bouley Bay and St.
This tower was one of the first things that caught our eyes as we entered the harbor. It gave an antique picturesqueness to the landscape which it entirely wanted without this. Round stone towers are not so common in this world that we can afford to be indifferent to them. This is called a Martello tower, but I could not learn who built it.
After these he made many other figures in the same church, and particularly in two chapels in the tramezzo. And about the same time he painted the shrine of the Canto alla Cuculia, and that which is on the house-front in the Via de' Martelli; and, over the Martello door in S. Spirito, a S. Augustine in fresco presenting the Rule to his friars.
At ten o'clock, a staff officer of General Wragge joined Major Hardwicke and Captain Murray in their room, while one of the terrible army of twelve policemen of an island populated with "three thousand cooks" watched over the "Banker's Folly," and another garrisoned the old martello tower, where Alan Hawke lay alone in the grim majesty of death.
Such doors will, for the most part, be at, or near, the base of the building; except when raised for purposes of defence, as in the old Scotch border towers, and our own Martello towers, or, as in Switzerland, to permit access in deep snow, or when stairs are carried up outside the house for convenience or magnificence.
At the north end of the islet a curious round rock, exactly like a martello tower, but rather higher, rose out of the water, separated from the sea-wall by twenty or thirty feet of deep water, dark blue, transparent; sometimes rolling and rushing and tearing at the sides of the rock, sometimes gently lifting the seaweed that clung to the sides.
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