accomplished by the American squadron. He carried out the spirit of his orders, and so devoted very much more time to hunting for British cruisers that were accused of boarding American ships than to suppressing the slave-trade. In a book that he wrote about his experience on the coast, he devotes more space to telling how "the American commodore argued from documents and other testimony that bona fide American vessels had been interfered with, and, whether engaged in legal or illegal trade, they were in no sense amenable to British cruisers" than to the capture of slavers.
Nevertheless Foote did good work on the coast, and his book has some good stories of slaver days in it. Among the best of the stories is that of the capture of the American bark Pons, Captain James Berry, on November 30, 1845. The Pons had been at Kabenda for twenty days during which the British cruiser Cygnet remained on blockade. But-a time came when the Cygnet had to leave for supplies. At that Captain Berry turned the ship over to one Gallano, a Portuguese slaver, and at eight o’clock that night the Pons was under way with nine hundred and three slaves under her hatches.
To avoid the cruisers off shore the Pons kept alongshore during the night. At daylight, seeing the upper sails of a British cruiser out at sea, she furled her own sails and drifted so close in to the breakers that the natives came to the beach expecting her to come ashore. However, she neither grounded nor attracted the British cruiser, and eventually she stood out to sea.
As it happened, the Yorktown, Captain Bell, was lying in her path, but the slavers supposed she
