ts after them.
Fortune, however, had done more for the town than its defenders. Led by
an officer with sixteen sappers, and followed by twenty-five grenadiers,
the French party prepared to mount to the assault. Their orders were to
mount the breach and hold it, and the moment this was done the main body
of the storming party were at once to follow. But they met with an
unexpected obstacle. Instead of finding, as they had expected, merely a
shallow ditch, they found themselves at the edge of a counterscarp, the
wall being fifteen feet in depth, with a regular moat filled with water
between them and the foot of the breach.

They had brought with them only two or three short ladders, which were
intended to be used, if necessary, to aid them in clambering up the heap
of rubbish to the breach. The French had no idea of the existence of the
counterscarp. The ladders that they had brought were too short to enable
them to descend it, and the officer in command hesitated as to what
course to adopt. The mysterious silence maintained by the enemy was
disquieting. That the Turks had all fled and the tower was undefended
did not occur to the officer in command, and he feared that they must
have placed mines in the breach, and were for the present abstaining
from showing themselves or firing a shot, in hopes of tempting him to
make an assault. Before he could decide what was best to be done there
was a loud tramp of feet inside the tower, and then the British sailors
and marines showed themselves suddenly at the openings on each floor,
and at once opened a heavy fire.

Many of the French fell at once, and seeing that there was nothing to be
done, the officer gave the order for the rest to retreat, which they did
hastily. Djezzar was furious when he heard what had happened, and
questioned Edgar; and, on hearing that the tower had been altogether
deserted, as well as the adjacent portion of the wall, he ordered the
instant execution of six of the officers and a number of the men for
this gross neglect of their duty. He was exasperated that he himself
should have shared in the panic that had seized them when informed that
the French were assaulting the breach, and that no resistance had been
offered by his men; and Edgar congratulated himself that he was not one
of his officers. When the old pasha, however, recovered from the state
of fury into which he had fallen, he complimented the three British
officers highly on the quickness that