reached the port we had not finished coaling, and the natives, who had seemed so anxious to be rid of our presence, now appeared to seek for excuses to delay our departure. Having transferred some five hundred pounds of powder from the Georgia to the Alabama, as the latter ship had used up some of her very short supply in her fight with the Hatteras, in the forenoon of May 22 Captain Semmes sent me with a verbal message to the governor informing him that he would sail at half-past four that afternoon. While I was standing respectfully before the governor awaiting his answer, the captain of the little white Portuguese sloop was striding up and down the room with a fierce expression on his face. Finally the governor told me to tell Captain Semmes that the Alabama would not be permitted to depart at that hour, as the port regulations did not allow vessels to depart after four o'clock; and the Portuguese captain said to the governor, in French (evidently for my benefit), that if the governor wanted the "corsairs" stopped, he would stop them for him! When I repeated this remark to Captain Semmes, he only smiled and said, "Does he want his pretty white paint spoiled?"
Captain Semmes then sent me back to the governor with a message to the effect that the port regulation applied only to merchant vessels and that the Alabama and Georgia were men-of-war. At 4 p.m. the Alabama fired a gun as a signal to one of her boats to come aboard and at once commenced to weight anchor. We could see from our deck a company of soldiers trotting at the double-quick down to an obsolete water battery, where the old-fashioned rust-eaten cannon were mostly mounted in an extraordinary fashion, their muzzles resting on the parapet and their breeches supported on logs of wood. On board the Portuguese corvette there also seemed to be great excitement, as they beat to quarters with such a racket that every man aboard seemed to be giving orders or directions to some one else. At exactly half-past four the Alabama hoisted her
