s of the fallen. Lots of
them ran out of the village to do this, and this so infuriated the
French that they came on again with such a rush that they entered the
village with the flying Turks.

"The confusion was terrible, and the Turks were driven out. The spit of
sand was covered with fugitives, hundreds threw themselves into the
water and swam out to us. The castle, which, as you know, is a little
bit of a place, was crowded almost to suffocation, and thousands could
not get in. The fire of our boat guns kept the French back for a time,
and when at last the Turkish gun-boats got into position, they had to
fall back and make advances against the castle in a regular way.
Unfortunately Mustapha Pasha had been taken in the village, and the
garrison had no one to command them, still they resisted for two days,
and then surrendered, being almost mad with thirst, for, although we
spared as much water as we could, it was impossible for us to find
sufficient for six or seven thousand extra men.

"Our marines saved the castle the first day, Colonel Douglas landing and
taking command and restoring order, for the Turks were fighting fiercely
among themselves when we got in, and during the night he managed to send
off about a thousand of them to their ships. The whole business was
brought about owing to Mustapha Pasha not acting in accordance with the
advice that Sir Sidney had sent him to act against either Damietta or
Rosetta, as our ships would station themselves in the Bay of Aboukir,
and so threaten Alexandria that the French would not care to weaken
their force there by sending any considerable number of men to act
against the Turks. There, that is all that has happened. Now let us hear
your yarn."

Wilkinson gave a brief account of the trip of the _Tigress_.

"You see," he said, "we have not done much fighting; indeed, with the
exception of the first scrimmage at Astropalaia we can scarcely have
said to have had anything worth calling fighting at all. We picked up a
lot of small piratical craft, destroyed the majority of them, and sold
the others at Smyrna or Rhodes. We got altogether twelve thousand five
hundred for them, and as, of course, that will be shared by the _Tigre_,
we have done pretty well our share in the way of earning prize-money for
the ship. More, indeed, for the _Tigre's_ share of the prizes that you
have taken here won't come to more than fifteen or twenty thousand at
the outside. Besides that, we ha