352 MORE CRUISING AFTER PIRATES. 



boarded, by not only one authority, but by two or 

 three ; certainly by the harbour-master and the guard- 

 boat of some mau-of-war at anchor in the port. She 

 had to sign papers, deliver others, and generally give 

 an account of herself, her whole crew, arms, contents, 

 and other items being entered in printed forms. Pos- 

 sibly her crew consisted of five or six men, the captain, 

 and a boy, and she may have had a couple of small 

 swivel-guns on her after-bulkhead. A junk, or a dozen 

 junks, coming in, were never even looked at. I have 

 seen these vessels come sailing along in sixes, or more, 

 mounting ten or twelve guns each, and with crews of 

 forty or fifty men, large enough and perfectly able to 

 take the finest merchant vessel afloat. These junks 

 were not pirates, but honest traders, or ostensibly so ; 

 but honest traders were by no means above doing a bit 

 of piracy when trade was slack. However, this is not 

 the point of my remarks. What I objected to was that 

 these junks could come and go without any notice 

 whatever being taken of them, whereas our own vessels 

 were very differently treated ; and as I have said before, 

 pirates were often anchored in the port, which seemed 

 a queer arrangement, to say the least of it. On one 

 occasion I saw a small English vessel leave the port, 

 and a fine big junk follow her ; they both went round 



