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?"

The other laughed as he looked round. "One of them could do that now,
Sidi, seeing that there is scarce a gun on the rampart that could be
fired in return; but were all in good order, and with British
artillerists, the whole fleet would stand but a poor chance against
them, for while their shot would do but little injury to these solid
walls, these cannon would drill the ships through and through, and if
they did not sheer off, would sink them."

"But why British artillerists, brother, why not our own people?"

"Because you have no properly trained gunners. You know how strong
Algiers was, and yet it was attacked with success, twice by the French,
twice by ourselves, and once by us and the Dutch; but it is a rule that
a strongly defended fort cannot be attacked successfully by ships. If
these forts were in proper condition and well manned, I don't think that
even Nelson would attack them, though he might land somewhere along the
coast, attack and capture the town from the land side, and then carry
the batteries. Successful as he has been at sea, he has had some
experience as to the difficulty of taking forts. He was beaten off at
Teneriffe, and although he did succeed in getting the Danes to surrender
at Copenhagen, it's well known now th