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In those days of prodigies, however incapable of amazement I might have been, this roadstead, won by superhuman exertion from the ocean, this vast basin hewn to a depth of fifty feet in the granite, with accommodations for fifty men-of-war, for their building, for their repair, for their armament, filled me with an admiration such as I had felt at the first sight of the grandeur of the Alps."
"Well, we duly arrived in the roads of San Juan, and anchored well out of gunshot from the forts, seemingly without exciting any suspicion whatever. We carefully examined the roadstead, and there, sure enough, was just the craft for our purpose; but she was lying right under the guns of the fort.
We coasted along the yellow lowland, with its tormented background of tall cones, bluffs, and falaises; and we anchored, at 4 P.M., in the roadstead of Las Palmas, north of the spot where our s.s. Senegal whilom broke her back.
He remembered thinking what a fine little man the Captain was; that their sailing together was done.... A sympathetic disorder was brewing deep down on the ocean floor; the water now had a charged appearance, and was foul as the roadstead along the mouths of the Godivari a thick, whipped, yeasty look. The changes were very rapid.
Nevertheless, the roadstead was entered when calms or adverse winds rendered it expedient; the hamlet had its conveniences, and, like most English hamlets, its beauties; and the hall and park were not without their claims to state and rural magnificence.
The beer brewed at the castle is very poor; there is little or no fresh water up there, and what there is, does not amount to much. The castle is otherwise strong and well provided, having over an hundred guns in different batteries, which command the harbor and the entire roadstead. When we reached the ship she was laden. 15th, Saturday.
It was indeed a hurricane, in fact, one of those terrible windstorms which wrecks all the ships of a roadstead, and which, even on land, the most solid structures cannot resist. Such was the one which, on the 25th of July, 1825, devastated Guadaloupe.
Admiral Matelieff, apprised by scouts of his approach, behaved with the readiness and coolness of a veteran campaigner. Before De Castro could arrive in the roadstead of Malacca, he had withdrawn all his troops from their positions, got all his artillery reshipped, and was standing out in the straits, awaiting the enemy.
It was his weakness, and maybe, too, his strength. The sunset hung over this roadstead and the shore. The mountains glowed in it, the nearer wood fell dark, the beach showed milky white, a knot of palms upon a horn of land caught full gold and shone as though they were in heaven. Over upon the Cordera they were singing. The long cacique-canoe shot out from the shadow of the Marigalante.
The rest of the Spanish ships made their escape into the harbour of Malacca. Matelieff stood off and on in the straits for a day or two, hesitating for fear of shallows to follow into the roadstead. Before he could take a decision, he had the satisfaction of seeing the enemy, panic-struck, save him any further trouble.
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