"It is planned like a triangle, one face, mounting four guns, commanding the seaward end of the Boca, while the second face commands its inner extremity, the third face being turned toward the land and containing the entrance gate. The point or apex of the triangle juts out into the water; I was therefore unable to walk completely round it; nevertheless I examined both sides by walking past the back of it. The faces of the walls are quite smooth, and about twelve feet high; but the angles are set with rough quoin stones, up which, there being no lights in the battery, and no sign of a sentinel, I essayed to climb, accomplishing the ascent with no greater difficulty or hurt than the wearing of the soles off my stockings--for I took off my shoes for the sake of quietness and to gain a better foothold. Having gained the parapet, I found two sentries sitting there, with their backs against the wall, fast asleep, with their matchlocks beside them. Gently lifting their weapons in my hand, I shook out the priming--lest perchance they should awake and, seeing me, open fire upon me before I could get away--and then, replacing the weapons as I had found them, passed quietly on to examine the ordnance. The guns are very formidable, of a pattern such as I have never before seen, being a good twenty foot in length, and of a bigness to take a shot the size of a man's head, as I learned by passing my hands over the topmost shot of a pile which stood beside each gun. There are eight of these pieces of great ordnance, besides falcons and swivels which I did not stay to count, the heavy ordnance being all that caused me any anxiety. And even now they do not greatly trouble me; for if they keep no better watch there on other nights than they did on this, it would be easy for a couple of resolute men to enter the place, even as I did, bind and gag the sentinels, and spike all eight of the guns, and never a man of them any the wiser until they came to put fire to their pieces.