A clear, sunshiny day, I believe it was Friday, before we left Lisbon, a fearful cannonading began down in the vicinity of the fort. A squadron of five English warships came in and were to be in Lisbon to do honor on the occasion of a visit of the crown-prince of Sweden and Norway to that city in a few days. The first ship, or flagship, must have had some great guns. It thundered its 21 salvos greeting the fort, and the fort then answered with 21 shots. The other ships each fired a smaller number of shots, but the fort answered with a similar number.
There was only a small breeze, and it blew directly up the river and, by noon, when the firing ceased, the harbor was so full of black powder-smoke we could not see things a hundred feet away.
While we stood there on deck, there was heard a piping, as of a police whistle, and quite near our ship. Instantly we heard an anchor fall, with a great rattle of the chain. We stared out in the smoke in the direction of the sound but could see nothing. Then we heard another whistling, and at once there came a cannon shot our way, only powder, of course, with such force that it nearly threw us all to the deck. The air pressure was so strong that we felt as if we had been struck hard in the face with a flat hand, and it hurt. Then there was another shot fired, but that did not seem so near, and we judged it was fired from the other side of the ship; but we all bent down below the railing before the third shot came. Thus, there were fired from each side, alternately, 11 shots. And every time the shot was from the side of the warship toward us, our ship and rigging shook considerably. This was a salute to the capital city. We were glad when it was over. Our ears had been affected so we were almost deaf for the rest of that day.
When the smoke cleared away there lay a big and powerful ship, with five masts and yards on four. It was the biggest sailship I have seen. It had a crew of 900 men. When they went aloft, it was like ants out of their hill. And it did not take long to bend or unbend sails. Everything moved easily and rapidly. All commands were given by whistle. We could not hear a word. But we were to get better acquainted with the colossus and its crew.