Their black yards were deeply canted, like spears, to avoid collision.

The three hundred grimy hulls lay wallowing in the mud, like a herd of hippopotami asleep in the alluvium of the Nile.

Their sailless, raking masts, and canted yards, resembled a forest of fish-spears thrust into those same hippopotamus hides.

Partly flanking one side of the grounded fleet was a fort, whose batteries were raised from the beach.

On a little strip of this beach, at the base of the fort, lay a number of small rusty guns, dismounted, heaped together in disorder, as a litter of dogs.