hour, had let her steam go down and could not get under way until she got it up again. We ran around the island and, finding a cove, anchored near the shore, sending a lieutenant ashore to climb the promontory, from which lofty point of vantage, with the aid of his marine glasses, he plainly saw our would-be captor steaming out to sea in the opposite direction from our snug hiding-place. If she had sighted us it is easy to imagine what would have happened, as she carried ten guns—all of which were much heavier than our biggest piece of ordnance—and the little Georgia had more than twice as many prisoners on board of her as she had crew. In fact, our crew would not have been sufficient in numbers to handle and serve our forward pivot gun.
When night came we weighed anchor and put to sea and the next morning were busily engaged chasing and examining ships. Sometimes we would "bring to" an American, then be disappointed because he had changed his flag, and his papers as a neutral would be all correct. Most neutral vessels feared us, and as soon as they suspected our character would attempt to escape, thus causing us much unnecessary burning of coal. Few of them appeared to be friendly to us, and when asked for news seemed delighted when they had the courage to tell us some rigmarole about great disasters to the Confederate armies which they invented for the occasion. Some few gave us newspapers and kindly told us the truth as to what had happened before they left port in the world from which we were excluded.
It was a fortunate thing for us that we had not been able to land our prisoners in the Cape Verde islands, as we had intended to do. We had treated these unfortunates kindly; they received the same rations our own men did, and one half of them were released from their irons and allowed to roam around the deck in the daytime. They must have become attached to us, for first one man and then another asked to be permitted to talk to our first lieutenant, and
