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The galleries to the right and left, over Paris Street, are reserved for the exhibitions of the ministers of state and of the large public departments, and for models, specimens, plans, and drawings of war and merchant vessels, and of pleasure boats, and for plans of port, roadstead, and river works.
We passed out of the roadstead, we rounded the mighty headland by which we had entered, and were once more in face of that magnificent drop-curtain, which had now fallen upon one of the most vivid and novel passages of our lives. There is nothing strikes the traveller in his approach to the rock of Gibraltar so much as its resemblance to the trade-mark of the Prudential Insurance Company.
"I am the captain of a little trading schooner, the Nell Gwynn, which anchors in the roadstead till I have laid some private business before your excellency and can get on to the Spanish Indies." "Business private business! Then what in the name of all that's infernal," quoth Nicholls, "brought your sneaking face to yon window to fright my lady-guests?"
As soon as he thought himself at a safe distance from the six-and-thirties, he hauled up, and made five short stretches near the main, where he had much the best of the tide, and the whole strength of the breeze, and where there was nothing to molest him; the usual roadstead being under the island of course.
It had a small port of its own to the south-east of the promontory on which it stood, which, like the other ports of the ancient Phoenicia, is at the present time almost wholly sanded up. But its roadstead was of more importance than its port, and was used by the Persians as a station for their fleet, from which they could keep watch on Egypt.
A canoe soon came off with an invitation from the Governor requesting my company to dinner. I accepted it and went on shore, where I was received by a young man who was more merchant than soldier, but who had command of the fort which commanded the roadstead and the town.
If the ships of war came out, they were to try to run in past them, and, desperate as the attempt might be, attempt their original plan of landing to the westward of the town, taking it in flank, plundering the government storehouses, which they saw close to the landing-place, and then fighting their way back to their boats, and out of the roadstead.
I have lost many a deep-sea, besides hand leads by the dozen, on rocky bottoms; but give me the roadstead where a lead comes up light and an anchor heavy. There's a boat pulling athwart our forefoot, Captain Barnstable; shall I run her aboard or give her a berth, sir?" "'Tis the barge!" cried the officer; "Ned has not deserted me, after all!"
In about a week we made the land near the Gulf of Guayaquil, and thence ran down to Tumbez, an open roadstead, in which we brought up about a mile from the mouth of a river with a bar across it. Here the crew, instead of enjoying the rest they expected, were employed in towing off rafts of wood and water through the heavy surf setting on the shore.
We can imagine the imposing show it made as it lay in the roadstead of Malacca, now shorn of its ancient importance and long since superseded as the foremost shipping port in the Far East. The squadron consisted of four line of battle ships, fourteen frigates, seven sloops, eight Honourable East India Company's cruisers, fifty-seven transports and several gunboats altogether over 100 sail.
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