A few days after this, we sailed for the Mediterranean. We had shipped a couple more guns, and four additional hands. In those days it was necessary for merchantmen frequenting that sea to be strongly armed, for it was sadly infested by pirates. There were Moorish pirates, Salee rovers, and others, who went to sea in large vessels as well as in boats, and robbed indiscriminately all vessels they could overpower; then there were Algerine pirates, who had still larger vessels, and were superior to them in numbers; and, lastly, there were Greek pirates, every island and rock in the Aegean Sea harbouring some of them. Long years of Turkish misrule and tyranny had thoroughly enslaved and debased the great mass of the people; and the more daring and adventurous spirits, finding all lawful exercise of their energies denied them on shore, sought instead for such excitement and profit as piracy could afford them afloat. Some of them darted out in small boats from the sheltered coves and bays when any unarmed merchantman was becalmed near them; while others, in well-formed and well-manned vessels of large size, cruised about in all directions in search of prizes. Sometimes their strongholds, when discovered by the Turks, were attacked and destroyed, but generally they carried on their system of rapine with perfect impunity; and though the people of other governments complained, they had no legal power to punish the subjects of a friendly nation. So the Greeks, rejoicing in impunity, grew more and more audacious, till they levied contributions on all the civilised nations of Europe whose traders ventured into the Levant. Such was the state of things when the _Rainbow_ sailed on her first voyage to Smyrna. Captain Helfrich had been there before, and he knew the character of the people he had to deal with. We met with bad weather soon after leaving the Channel, and had already been driven some way to the westward, when, as we were in about the latitude of Lisbon, it came on to blow harder than ever from the eastward. Had we been close in with the land, this would not have signified; but before we could beat up again, a continuance of northerly and easterly gales drove us to the southward of the Gut of Gibraltar. When there, they left us in a dead calm, with our sails idly flapping against the masts, and rolling bulwarks under in the heavy swell they had caused on Old Ocean's bosom.