my, and who was educated in his youth with
the Marquis of Hastings, governor-general of India; so that I could
surely find a more lucrative, less dangerous, and more respectable
employment in India than that of a spy in Greece. I quitted England
because I considered the government treated me with injustice, in
arbitrarily dismissing me from the navy, after more than fourteen
years of active service, for an affair of honour, while I was on
half-pay." This letter obtained for Hastings an audience of the
president, and his services were at length accepted.

On the 3d of May 1822, the Greek fleet began to get under weigh at
Hydra, and Hastings embarked as a volunteer on board the Themistocles,
a corvette belonging to the brothers Tombazis. The scene presented by
the Hydriote ships hauling out of harbour was calculated to depress
the hopes of the most sanguine friend of Greece. Those of the crew who
chose to come on board did so; the rest remained on shore, and came
off as it suited their convenience. When it became necessary to make
sail, the men loosed the sails, but shortly found that no sheets were
rove, and the bow-lines bent to the bunt line cringles. At last sheets
were rove. But as the ships were getting clear of the harbour, a
squall came on; then every man on board shouted to take in sail; but
there were no clue-lines bent, and the men were obliged to go out on
the jib-boom to haul down the sail by hand. The same thing occurred
with the topgallant sails. The crews, however, were gradually
collected; things assumed some slight appearance of order; and after
this singular exhibition of anarchy and confusion, the fleet bore up
for Psara.

It is needless to describe the scenes of misery Hastings witnessed
when the fleet arrived at Scio, as the particulars of the frightful
manner in which that island had been devastated by the Turks are
generally known. The war was at this period carried on with unexampled
barbarity, both by the Greeks and Turks. As an illustration of the
manner in which naval warfare had been previously conducted in the
Levant, we shall quote the account given by an English sailor of the
conduct of the Russo-Greek privateers in 1788. The modern atrocities
were not perpetrated on so large a scale, and the officers rarely
countenanced them, but still it would be too invidious to cite single
examples. We shall therefore copy a short extract from Davidson's
narrative of a cruise on board one of the vesse