"'Wot's the reason we don't set all our canvas?'
"'Excellentment!' sez he, w'ich are French fur 'bully,' an' I jumps out an' gives the orders.
"Waal, boys, jess as soon as we got the canvas on her we commenced fur to push the Garman back'ard, an' he commenced fur to do the dancin' an' howlin'; but it didn't do him no good. He heaped coal onto his fires an' he burnt oil an' ham fat, but he couldn't hold us. We shoved him all the way down the Red Sea an' out into the Indian Ocean. Then he got his men forrad an' tried to cut his ship out o' ours, but Cap'n Zhan Four ordered the hose turned on 'em with hot water, an' that stopped that job. Finally, the Garman Cap'n, he come forrad with a flag o' truce, an' sez he'd like to make a treaty o' peace atwixt Garmany an' France on the high seas. So him an' Cap'n Zhan Four had a long talk, an' finally they agreed that they'd make fur the nearest port, each one agreein' to be pushed back'ards half-way an' to keep his engines agoin' reversed to help things along. An' so we finally reached the island o' Socotra, w'ere we contrived to get the ships apart an' patch ours up fur the run to Bombay."
[TWO LEADERS OF THE GREEK REVOLUTION.]
BY V. GRIBAYEDOFF.
reece's active championship of the cause of the Cretan revolutionists, in the face of the opposition of the combined powers of Europe, recalls that plucky little nation's fierce struggle for her own independence from Turkish rule during the early portion of the present century. Indeed, as Prince George started for Cretan waters the other day with his flotilla of torpedo-boats, almost the last words Prime-Minister Delyannis said to him were:
"May the spirit of the great Canaris hover over your Highness and your brave men, inspiring you to maintain nobly the traditions of the Hellenic navy!"
Here is probably what Delyannis had in mind: The Greece of to-day lacks the larger vessels of war fully as much as did the Greece of 1820, but at that earlier period she possessed a formidable weapon in the dreaded fire-ship, and under Canaris's lead the enemy's naval power was almost destroyed by this primitive method of attack. The fire-ship of the past has been supplanted by the torpedo-boat of the present, an engine of war calling into play almost the same qualities as its predecessor—pluck, skill, dash, and rapidity in handling. And Delyannis was therefore anticipating that the deeds of the early part of the century would be repeated at its close in a mode of warfare for which his countrymen are both by nature and temperament eminently fitted.