r barges,
which were called the "mosquito fleet" and Farragut was assigned to one
of the vessels named the _Greyhound_, and in command of it he had many
exciting encounters with the pirates. At one time when off the Southern
coast of Cuba, some of the _Greyhound's_ crew who had gone ashore to
hunt game, were fired on by the pirates, and returned this fire without
effect, then went back to their ship. Farragut was ordered to take a
party of men to capture the pirates, and at three o'clock the next
morning, they set out in the barges, and after landing on the island,
had no easy time to find the pirate camp, as they had to cut their way
through thickets of trailing vines, thorny bushes and cactus plants and
in such intense heat that some of the men fainted from exhaustion. They
found the camp, but their prey had fled! Evidently the approaching
vessels had been seen, and the pirates were gone. The sailors at once
searched their camp, which was protected by several cannon, and there
they found some houses a hundred feet long, and also an immense cave
filled with all kinds of goods taken from plundered vessels.

The sailors burned the houses, and carried off the plunder and the
cannon to their boats, while David carried away a monkey as his prize.
Just as the men were returning to their boats, they heard a great noise
behind them, and thought surely that the pirates had come back to
attack them, and Farragut stood still and made a speech to the sailors,
urging them to fight bravely and to stand their ground like men.
Imagine their surprise and amusement when they found their foes were
not pirates, but thousands of land-crabs scurrying through the briars!

This was only one of the incidents that young Farragut had while on his
first cruise as acting lieutenant. During the entire cruise to the West
Indies, the American sailors suffered much from yellow fever and from
exposure, and in alluding to the voyage in after days, Farragut said:

"I never owned a bed during my cruise in the West Indies, but laid me
down to rest wherever I found the most comfortable berth."

The pirates were finally driven from the seas, their boats burned or
captured, and their camps entirely destroyed, and Farragut's first and
most exciting cruise as a youthful commander came to an end. The
honours which were his at a later day were such as come to the man of
years of training and experience, but from the day when the little
midshipman stood on the