directing their fire where it seemed to be most needed, and the flotilla
of mortar and rocket boats were distributed at the openings between the
line-of-battle ships and the mole.

This admirable disposition of the force seemed to inspire the men with
additional confidence, if such were possible, but ere long the dense
smoke rendered everything invisible beyond a few yards' distance from
the actors in the tremendous fight.

In a few minutes after opening fire, the _Queen Charlotte_ had reduced
the fortifications on the mole-head to ruins. She then brought her
broadside to bear on the batteries over the gate leading to the mole and
on the upper works of the light-house. Her shot told on it with fatal
accuracy, crumbling the tower and bringing down gun after gun, thus
proving that the ball-practice on the voyage out had not been undertaken
in vain. Indeed, so expert did some of the gunners find themselves that
they actually amused themselves at one part of the day in attempting to
hit the Algerine flag-staff!

It chanced that, owing to some alteration in the arrangements, our
friend Rais Ali was transferred from the battery on the walls, where he
had originally been stationed, to that on the light-house, and when he
beheld gun after gun tumbling helplessly over the crumbling parapets,
his spirit fired, and he amazed his comrades by displaying a disregard
of personal danger for which he had never before got credit. Whether it
was that Ted Flaggan had underrated him, or that there is truth in the
proverb about extremes meeting, we cannot tell, but certain it is, that
when Rais Ali saw every gun of the battery dismounted but one, he rushed
at that one like an enraged lion, seized the rammer from the man who
wielded it, and began to load.

He might have spared himself the trouble, for before he got the charge
rammed home, a shot from the terrible _Queen Charlotte_ struck the
parapet just underneath, burst it up, and toppled the gun over. Rais
leaped on the ramparts, waved his scimitar with a yell of defiance, and,
tumbling after the gun, was lost amid a cloud of lime-dust and debris.

Strange to say, he rose from out the ruin almost unhurt, and quite
undismayed.

Hasting along the quay without any definite end in view, he found the
captain of the port getting the flotilla of gun-boats ready for action.
There were thirty-seven of them, and up to that time they had lain as
snugly in the harbour as was compatible with