But I think I never saw him at his winsomest until that night.

It was near a center of civilization, and he could have been drinking.
By and by, when we had approached to somewhere within thirty miles of Sydney Heads the great electric light that is posted on one of those lofty ramparts began to show, and in time the little spark grew to a great sun and pierced the firmament of darkness with a far-reaching sword of light.
Sydney Harbor is shut in behind a precipice that extends some miles like a wall, and exhibits no break to the ignorant stranger.

It has a break in the middle, but it makes so little show that even Captain Cook sailed by it without seeing it.

Near by that break is a false break which resembles it, and which used to make trouble for the mariner at night, in the early days before the place was lighted.

It caused the memorable disaster to the Duncan Dunbar, one of the most pathetic tragedies in the history of that pitiless ruffian, the sea.