ana, until you can send and seize the pirates, should you
think proper, as they have been plundering and annoying the trade of the
Ionian Islands. I send two of the pirates in irons, in order that,
obtaining further information, you may deal with them and with the
others according to the law of nations."

That instance of the policy adopted by Lord Cochrane will help to show
how he set himself to put down piracy. The work was not easy, as the
lawless conduct was secretly authorised by the Government, and practised
with very little secresy by great numbers of the national vessels. It
was in vain that he issued the proclamation of the 27th of October, that
has been quoted; in vain, too, that he sent two gunboats to visit all
the principal ports, with fresh injunctions against piracy and with
authority to compel obedience to those injunctions, if necessary, by
force. Good work, however, was done by these gunboats, in conjunction
with two brigs detached for the purpose, in escorting neutral trading
vessels through the waters most infested by the sea-robbers.

Slowly and painfully the conviction was forced upon Lord Cochrane that,
after all his previous failures in attempting to turn the lawless Greeks
into honest patriots and to convert their ill-manned ships into members
of an efficient navy, his labours were now more useless than ever. After
a fortnight's cruising about Navarino, he retraced his course and
anchored, on the 3rd of December, off Egina, where the so-called
Government was then located. To it he wrote on that day, asking for
directions as to his mode of procedure. "The squadron under my command,"
he said, "has been in the blockade of Coron, Modon, and Navarino, and I
have to inform your excellencies that there yet exists in the port of
Navarino a naval force, under the Turkish flag, superior to the force
under my command. I have, therefore, felt it my duty to repair to this
port, in order that I may obtain instructions for my guidance, more
especially as the Turkish squadron is ready for sea, and said to be
destined for Candia, with ten thousand men, intending there to repeat
the barbarities which the want of provisions in the Morea renders it
impossible they can longer perpetrate in that quarter. There is also a
great number of captive women and children about to be transported as
slaves, and the only force of the allied powers off Navarino consists of
a small brig, the _Pelican_, which is totally inadequate