English property attached to the bill of
lading and invoices; as in the event of falling in with the numerous
privateers, it would save both cargo and vessel, in all probability. An
American ship, recently fallen in with, was released by the Alabama on
account of a British Consul's certificate showing the greater part of
the cargo to be English property. If you ship in a neutral vessel, we
save five per cent, war insurances."

Another prize. The Talisman, a fine ship of 1100 tons, under United
States colours and register, with no claim of neutral property in cargo;
and before the glare of her funeral pyre had faded from the horizon,
another hove in sight, so evidently American, that notwithstanding the
English ensign flying at her peak, she was at once brought to and
boarded. And American she proved to be in her origin; but her owners had
been wise, and, so far as her papers went, she had been regularly
transferred to the protection of the British flag--humiliating, perhaps,
to the proud "Yankee nation," but effective as a precaution against
capture; though, had the Confederate cruiser been able to send her into
port for adjudication, the transfer might very possibly, when the
evidence came to be sifted, have proved but a "bogus transaction" after
all.

So the "Englishman" had to be released, consenting, however, to relieve
the Alabama of a prisoner and his wife, recently captured on board the
Talisman. A week passed away, and then came another instance of a
similar transfer under the strong pressure of fear, the whilom Yankee
barque Joseph Hall, of Portland, Maine, now seeking a humiliating safety
as the "British" Azzopadi, of Port Lewis, Isle of France!

Alas! for the Stars and Stripes, the Azzopadi was not hull down on the
horizon ere the once-renowned Yankee clipper Challenger lay humbly, with
her maintopsail to the mast, in the very place in which her countryman
had just been performing a similar penance, claiming, as the
British-owned Queen of Beauty, a similar immunity.

At last, however, as the impatient crew of the Alabama were beginning to
think that their enemy's flag had finally vanished from the face of the
ocean, an adventurous barque hove in sight, with the old familiar
bunting at her peak. She proved to be the Conrad, of Philadelphia, from
Buenos Ayres for New York, partly laden with wool, the ownership of
which was, as usual, claimed as neutral. On investigation, the claim
proved an evident-fabricat