dark as to their destination and the nature of the service that they were to perform. The two vessels, which, as warships, would not by international treaty have been able to leave the Black Sea, passed through the Dardanelles under the commercial flag, and then steered straight to the Suez Canal, where the non-belligerent character was still maintained. But it seems that on reaching Constantinople the commanders had been informed that their ships had been raised to the rank of second-class cruisers in the Russian fleet; and no sooner had the Red Sea been reached than the _Petersburg_ and the _Smolensk_ put off their commercial disguise and put on the character of ships of war. They flew the naval flag, and mounted the armament of 5in. quick-firers, which had been up to that moment securely stowed away. The Government service for which they had been designated was that of searching for contraband on neutral vessels, and the _soi-disant_ cruisers lost no time in demonstrating their zeal. All this time, by the way, the Russian Admiralty was strenuously denying that the _Petersburg_ and the _Smolensk_ had left the Black Sea at all. On the 15th July the commerce-raiders began operations, rather tactlessly, by stopping and seizing the German mail steamer, _Prinz Heinrich_, and by confiscating the Japanese mails. The indignation and astonishment of the German public had only begun to make itself heard, when it was distracted by the intelligence that the P. and O. steamer _Malacca_ had also been stopped, and had been actually brought back to Suez in charge of a Russian prize crew. The vessel, flying the Russian flag, reached Suez on the 19th July, and on the 20th the English Government, moved thereto by the clamor which began to be heard both in Parliament and in the press, addressed to the Government of the Czar a strongly-worded protest against the seizure and a demand that the _Malacca_ should be instantly released. The demand was based on the irregular position of the _Petersburg_--a vessel which, if a ship of war, ought not to have passed the Dardanelles, and which, if not a ship of war, had no right to stop and search neutral vessels. This contention was unanswerable; for it is evident that if a ship could be permitted to change its character at will, it could perform all the functions of a ship of war and still enjoy all the privileges of a non-belligerent at neutral ports. [Sidenote: Case of the "Malacca"]