'I have returned to Malta, refitted, and am again up the Archipelago with Captain Hamilton who has just joined company. We have been the last forty-eight hours rather harassingly employed routing out a nest of pirates which we have done nearly to a man. Our boats have been away all night and the brig under way. My marines took the men under Lieut. Weately, and my men took two Greek boats with nine men each on board one of which was the Captain of the Pirates; the _Fury's_ boats took the vessels and their prizes, eleven in number. There was no fighting. Captain Lethaby in the _Vengeance_ and _Alacrity_ brought the Bey of Rhodes to his senses the other day; the Consul had been insulted, he would give no satisfaction, so we took the old way and began at him, when he came to terms. One 18 lb. shot through his palace made him know that we did not always bark and never bite. _Alacrity_ was near enough the battery to receive a heavy fire of stones from the Turks which, with a few muskets discharged at us, was all the return made by the Turks before the thing was amicably arranged.... 'Love to all; I wish Lady Elizabeth Stuart (de Rothesay) would write to me, I do sincerely love that cousin of mine; Grantham's letter I will answer next opportunity, I am delighted with it. 'Adieu, 'C. YORKE' VOURLA, GULPH Of SMYRNA: June 10, 1825. CHAPTER V A HOLIDAY IN NORTHERN REGIONS. 1828 My father appears to have had a long leave between the two commands, in the _Alacrity_ (1826) and the _Alligator_ (1829), during which commands he was employed in the Mediterranean, with a roving commission--a free lance, in short--to put down piracy and watch the War of Independence between the Greeks and the Turks. He never let the grass grow under his feet, so off he started with his friend Walrond on a roving tour through the greater part of Scandinavia, and his journals contain a daily record, extending over nearly six months. He crossed the Dovrefeld Range between Norway and Sweden (a journey seldom undertaken to-day), and in 1828 the lack of travelling facilities was exceptional. The energy and resource of my father's character and his great powers of observation appear to great advantage in these journals, and there are many facts which I shall endeavour to relate as far as possible in his own graphic words. He was greatly impressed by the kindness and hospitality he received from all classes in both countries with the exception of one district near Gottenborg, where he met with some outrageous conduct on the part of a postmaster, who either thought he was robbed, or else fully intended to rob his guest. He was honoured by interviews with King Charles John IV, better known as Bernadotte, Napoleon's Field-Marshal and founder of the present royal dynasty of Sweden, and it is worthy of note that as far back as 1828, Norway was chafing under the Union with Sweden which was brought about by the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 and has so lately been dissolved.