At Aboukir and Acre

CONTENTS


CHAP. Page

I. MAKING A FRIEND 11

II. A BEDOUIN TRIBE 31

III. LEFT BEHIND 49

IV. THE BATTLE OF THE PYRAMIDS 66

V. A STREET ATTACK 86

VI. THE RISING IN CAIRO 105

VII. SAVED 122

VIII. AN EGYPTIAN TOMB 142

IX. SIR SIDNEY SMITH 162

X. A SEA-FIGHT 182

XI. ACRE 199

XII. A DESPERATE SIEGE 217

XIII. AN INDEPENDENT COMMAND 234

XIV. A PIRATE HOLD 251

XV. CRUISING 270

XVI. A VISIT HOME 287

XVII. ABERCROMBIE'S EXPEDITION 304

XVIII. THE BATTLE OF ALEXANDRIA 322

XIX. QUIET AND REST 340



CHAPTER I.

MAKING A FRIEND.


Two lads were standing in one of the bastions of a fort looking over the
sea. There were neither guards nor sentinels there. The guns stood on
their carriages, looking clean and ready for action, but this was not
the result of care and attention, but simply because in so dry a climate
iron rusts but little. A close examination would have shown that the
wooden carriages on which they stood were so cracked and warped by heat
that they would have fallen to pieces at the first discharge of the guns
they upheld. Piles of cannon-balls stood between the guns, half-covered
with the drifting sand, which formed slopes half-way up the walls of the
range of barracks behind, and filled up the rooms on the lower floor.
Behind rose the city of Alexandria, with its minarets and mosques, its
palaces and its low mud-built huts. Seaward lay a fleet of noble ships
with their long lines of port-holes, their lofty masts, and network of
rigging.

"What do you think of it, Sidi?"

"It is wonderful!" his companion replied. "How huge they are, what lines
of cannon, what great masts, as tall and as straight as palm-trees!
Truly you Franks know many things of which we in the desert are
ignorant. Think you that they could batter these forts to pieces?"