Strange! how little sense of calamity¹ came with them--at first. So graceful² they were. So fitted--like waterfowl--to every mood of air and tide; their wings all furled, their neat bodies breasting the angry flood by the quiet power of their own steam and silent submerged wheels. So like to the numberless crafts which in kinder days, under friendly tow, had come up this same green and tawny³ reach and passed on to the queenly city, laden⁴ with gifts, on the peaceful embassies of the world.

But, ah! how swiftly, threateningly they grew: the smaller, two-masted fore-and-afts, each seemingly unarmed but for one monster gun pivoted⁵ amidships, and the towering, wide-armed three-masters, the low and the tall consorting⁶ like dog and hunter. Now, as they came on, a nice eye could make out, down on their hulls⁷, light patches of new repair where our sunken fleet had so lately shot and rammed⁸ them, and, hanging over the middle of each ship's side in a broad, dark square to protect her vitals, a mass of anchor chains. Their boarding-netting, too, one saw, drawn¹⁰ high round all their sides, and now more guns--and more!--and more! the huger frowning over the bulwarks¹¹, the lesser¹² in unbroken rows, scowling¹³ each from its own port-hole, while every masthead revealed itself a little fort

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