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Late in the afternoon we brought up in the roadstead of Sarawak, on the northern coast of Borneo. The place is not at all enlivening; neither house, human being, nor boat, to indicate we are in habitable land. The town itself, the capital of a small rajahship governed by an Englishman, lies some twenty miles up a river, in the estuary of which we are anchored.
Thus, by judiciously raising or lowering one or both the guaras, the raft may not only be steered with the greatest nicety, but may be tacked or wore, or otherwise directed, with precision. I never shall forget the sensation produced in a ship I commanded one evening on the coast of Peru, as we steered towards the roadstead of Payta.
Craven had no clear impression of the run back into Yokohama and he looked up with surprise when the men stopped. He stood outside the gate for a moment looking over the harbour. He stared at the place in the roadstead where the American yacht had been anchored. Only last night had he laughed and chatted with the Athertons? It was a lifetime ago! In one night his youth had gone from him.
Forty-one vessels had been lost; in one uninhabited roadstead alone, some forty miles away from Indian Harbour, lay sixteen wrecks. The shore here was lined with rude shelters made from the wreckage of spars and sails, and the women were busy cooking meals and "tidying up" the shacks as if they had lived there always. We soon set to work hauling off such vessels as would float.
There were marine officers from Bas Obispo, straight, trim, brown of cheek; naval officers from the cruisers in the roadstead, clad in their white trousers and bell-boy jackets; army officers detailed from Washington on special duty; others from the various parts of the work itself.
Again, when wrestling with the perplexities and exigencies of the wild Brest blockade in midwinter, in January, 1801, he wrote concerning repairs to his own vessels, "Under the present impending storm from the north of Europe, and the necessity there is of equipping every ship in the royal ports that can swim, no ship under my command must have anything done to her at Plymouth or Portsmouth that can be done at this anchorage," at Torbay, an open though partially sheltered roadstead.
I must confess that I was not very greatly impressed by Yokohama, as viewed from the roadstead. The most prominent object was the "Bund," or water-front, which is a wide wharf or esplanade, backed by gardens, hotels, and well-built dwelling-houses.
Some arch-bellboy or other potentate had mounted to the seat beside the driver. Madly we clattered over cobbled ways. Out on the smooth waters of the roadstead lay ships great and small, ships with stripped masts and smokeless funnels, others with faint gray spirals wreathing upward from their stacks.
Shortly, by divergent routes, the partners rode unnoticed into town, and into the excitement of the hold-up news, while the tardy still lingered over their breakfasts. Far out in the roadstead lay the Roanoke, black smoke pouring from her stack. A tug was returning from its last trip to her. Glenister forced his lathered horse down to the beach and questioned the longshoremen who hung about.
Nor did the prospect of the rising gale and rising sea cause any of the trio to blanch. It was not a long run to Big Wreck Cove. Properly manned, the Seamew should make it prettily in three or four hours. In addition, there was little but an open roadstead before the port of Hollis. The breakwater was scarcely strong enough to fend off the waves in a real gale.
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