At this juncture came the famous blockade runner, the Arkadi, a most successful contrabandist of the American war, and at every trip she made she carried away a number of women and children.  Meanwhile we waited for the arrival of the American man-of-war which was to put the machinery of relief to the non-combatants in operation.  She never came, and in reply to a telegram to Commodore Goldsborough, who was at Nice, I received the information that he knew nothing of any orders for Crete.  Intrigues had supervened at Constantinople, chief mover in which was the dragoman of our legation, a Philo-Turkish Levantine, and the persistent assailant in various American journals of Mr. Morris and myself.  As the result of these intrigues the order to the admiral was recalled.  In March a corvette, the Canandaigua, came for a short stay, but the manner of the officers towards me, and the observations of most of the officers on what they considered a sort of “slave trade,” i.e. the carrying of women and children, made me very glad to see her sail again.  I made a little use of her, however, by persuading the captain to run down to Retimo with me to inspect the condition of the refugees in that town, and to distribute the money, etc., with which I had been furnished by the committee at Athens for that purpose.  I also induced the captain to run over to Peiraeus to reorganize the consulate there, the consul having run away, leaving the office in the hands of his creditors, from whom I rescued the archives, the only property on the place, and not liable to seizure for his debts.  I took the same opportunity to exchange views with the Greek ministers, and began a friendship with Tricoupi which lasted as long as he lived.  The captain sympathized with me, but he had had his orders, and the officers in general (two of the younger ones took an opportunity to tell me how glad they would have been to aid the Cretan families) were pro-Turkish.  But the Turks did not know all the facts, and the visit of the Canandaigua was a moral support to me.

The hostility between Mustapha Pasha and myself had now become so open that all intercourse ceased.  For months my children had not gone beyond the threshold, and I myself was openly threatened with assassination; the butchers in the market were forbidden to serve me with meat, and I got supplies only indirectly.  Canea was so well beleaguered by land by the insurgents that we had scanty provision of produce at the best, nothing being obtainable from the territory beyond the Turkish outposts.  The Austrian steamer brought weekly a few vegetables, but the cattle within the lines were famished and diseased, and there was no good meat and little fish, the fishermen, who were Italians, all going home.  I finally sent to Corfu for the little yacht on which I had made quarantine, and, pending her arrival, sent Laura and the children to Syra.  When the Kestrel arrived, we spent most of our time on board, running between the ports of Crete and between Crete and the Greek Islands, generally followed by a Turkish gunboat, for Mustapha persisted in regarding me as the go-between in Greco-Cretan affairs, and while the zapties watched my door, the Cretan post went to and fro through the gates of the city unsuspected.