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Updated: May 28, 2025
They complained, that the British ships of war were converted into Guarda Costas, and their commanders into custom-house officers; an employment utterly unworthy of the exalted character of the British navy: That naval officers were very unfit for this business in which they were employed, being naturally imperious in their tempers, and little acquainted with the various cases in which ships were liable to penalties, or in which they were exempted from detention: That that branch of trade was thereby ruined, by which alone they were furnished with gold and silver for making remittances to England; and that though the loss fell first upon them, it would ultimately fall on the commerce and revenue of Great Britain.
"I had a reason for it. It is not always easy to separate the Commander from the man. If I have temporarily forgotten the obligations of the former in the wishes of the latter, so far, at least, harm has not come of it. I may have tired of chasing your indolent Don, and of driving guarda costas into port.
What then did Pisa look like in these the days of her great power and prosperity? She was a city, we may think, of narrow shadowy streets like the Via delle Belle Torri, full of refuse and garbage too, for then, as now in the remoter places, the household slops were simply hurled out of the windows with a mere guarda! called from an upper window.
Without the beautiful colouring of Master Vlimer's work at Coimbra, or the charm of the reredos at Funchal, with figures distinctly inferior to those by Master Nicolas at São Marcos, this Guarda reredos is yet a very fine piece of work, and is indeed the only large one of its kind which still survives.
The careless bystanders, the London ladies with their eye-glasses and look of an Opera-box, the yawning young gentlemen of the Guarda Nobile, and the laugh of one of the file of vermilion Priests round the steps of the altar at the whispered good thing of his neighbor, brought one back to nothing indeed of a very lofty kind, but still to the Nineteenth Century."
"We shall get out of the town the instant the gates are opened; and the boat is tied to the steps, as before, only under the charge of a sentry whom we can easily evade. Every guarda costa in the place was sent out last night to blockade a noted smuggler who has taken refuge in Tangier; so, once out, we are safe from pursuit: I found it all out after you had gone to bed."
He came on deck resembling a swathed mummy, and perspiring freely under the heavy load. When the Guarda Costa had approached within fair gunshot, and we were every minute expecting an iron shower, we saw at a short distance ahead on a projecting point of land, a fort on which several guns were mounted, and the Patriot flag was waving from a tall flagstaff.
Though the reredos is very much larger and of finer design, the figures have sufficient resemblance to those in the chapel of the Holy Sacrament in the Sé Velha at Coimbra, put up in 1566, to show that they must be more or less contemporary, the Guarda reredos being probably the older.
The sudden apparition of the felucca, the departure of the Guarda Costa without firing a shot, and the exultation of the officers who boarded us, and which they tried in vain to conceal, all convinced me there was some mystery which it was not in my power to fathom. "Where are you bound, captain?" inquired the officious commander of the felucca.
"This, gentlemen, is my mate, Jeremy Sparrow by name, who hath a taste for divinity that in no wise interferes with his taste for a galleon or a guarda costa. This man, Diccon Demon by name, was of my crew. The gentleman without a sword is my prisoner, taken by me from the last ship I sunk. How he, an Englishman, came to be upon a Spanish bark I have not found leisure to inquire.
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