We had now been a week in Curacoa, during which time, besides recruiting, and refreshing my crew, I had made all the necessary preparations for another cruise. The ship had been thoroughly overhauled, inside and out, and her coal-bunkers were full of good English coal. It only remained for us to put to sea. Accordingly, at twelve o'clock precisely, on the day last above mentioned, as had been previously appointed, the Sumter, bidding farewell to her new-made friends, moved gracefully out of the harbor—this time, amid the waving of handkerchiefs, in female hands, as well as of hats in the hands of the males; the quay being lined, as before, to see us depart. The photographer took a last shot at the ship, as she glided past his sanctum, and we looked with some little interest to the future numbers of that ‘Journal of Civilization,’ vulgarly yclept ‘Harper's Weekly,’ for the interesting portrait; which came along in due time, accompanied by a lengthy description, veracious, of course, of the ‘Pirate.’
Curacoa lies a short distance off the coast of Venezuela, between Laguayra, and Puerto Cabello, and as both of these places had some commerce with the United States, I resolved to look into them. The morning after our departure found us on a smooth sea, with a light breeze off the land. The mountains, back of Laguayra, loomed up blue, mystic, and majestic, at a distance of about thirty miles and the lookout, at the mast-head, was on the qui vive for strange sails. He had not to wait long. In the tropics, there is very little of that bewitching portion of the twenty-four hours, which, in other parts of the world, is called twilight. Day passes into night, and night into day, almost at a single bound. The rapidly approaching dawn had scarcely revealed to us the bold outline of the coast, above mentioned, when sail ho! resounded from the mast-head. The sail bore on our port-bow, and was standing obliquely toward us. We at once gave chase, and at half-past 6 A. M., came up with, and captured the schooner Abby Bradford, from New York, bound for Puerto Cabello.
We knew our prize to be American, long before she showed us her colors. She was a ‘down-East,’ fore-and-aft schooner, and there are no other such vessels in the world. They are
