"Well, we duly arrived in the roads of San Juan, and anchored well out of gunshot from the forts, seemingly without exciting any suspicion whatever. We carefully examined the roadstead, and there, sure enough, was just the craft for our purpose; but she was lying right under the guns of the fort. She was a pretty vessel: schooner-rigged, very low in the water, and--as we found out when we took her--of very deep draught; broad in the beam, and `flush-decked' fore and aft, with no raised fore or after castles. We could see, by her open ports, that she carried twelve guns of a side--nine-pounders they were,--with a long gun forward of her foremast that threw a thirty-two pound shot. She was therefore quite heavily armed enough for our purpose, and there would be no need to transfer our old guns to her when she was captured; and we should thus be saved a great deal of labour. Her masts were very long and tapering, with a big rake aft, and from a distance the vessel looked overmasted; but when one got on board her one saw that her great width of beam gave her the stiffness necessary to carry such lofty masts with their corresponding spread of sail. In short, she was just what we wanted, and, indeed, we could not have had a ship better suited to our purpose even though we had built her ourselves. Needless to say, we determined to cut her out from under the guns of the fort, and capture her, at any risk, that very night. During the day we got up our arms, loaded our pistols, sharpened up our swords and cutlasses, and got all ready for the night attack. We were in a fever of impatience to try our luck, and could hardly bring ourselves to wait until dark, still less until midnight, which we decided was the earliest hour at which we could make an attempt. So great was our excitement and impatience that we strove to allay them by drinking raw spirits continually; and by night we were mad with drink, the only effect of which was to turn us into a gang of demons who would stop at nothing. It was perhaps due to the drink--though we did not know it--that we actually took the vessel after all; for we encountered a most stubborn resistance; and had there been any people in the fort, they would certainly have opened fire upon us, and we should have been killed to a man. Luckily, as it happened, for us, there was a carnival in progress in the town that night, and nearly every man in the place was attending it. Those who had not got leave deserted, and went all the same, even to the last sentry; so that when we made our attack there was not a solitary soldier in the fort.