rd them assistance.

"For three days, we remained in this state of cruel uncertainty. By
the help of my spying-glass, I had made a drawing of this
disastrous scene; that I might be enabled the better to ascertain,
whether the morrow would be productive of any change.

"In this way we cherished illusion, and spurned at all evidence;
till, at length, the passage across the bar being cut off; and the
communication with Alexandria intercepted, we found that our
situation was altered; and that, separated from the mother-country,
we were become the inhabitants of a distant colony, where we should
be obliged to depend on our own resources for subsistence, till the
peace. We learned, that it was L'Orient which blew up at ten
o'clock at night, and L'Hercule the following morning; and that the
captains of the ships of the line, Le Guillaume Tell and
Genereux--and of the frigates, La Diane and La Justice--perceiving
that the rest of the fleet had fallen into the enemy's hands, had
taken advantage of a moment of lassitude and inaction on the part
of the English, to effect their escape. We learned, lastly, that
the 1st of August had broken the unity of our forces; and that the
destruction of our fleet, by which the lustre of our glory was
tarnished, had restored to the enemy the empire of the
Mediterranean: an empire which had been wrested from them by the
matchless exploits of our armies, and which could only have been
secured to us by the existence of our ships of war.

"The shore, to the extent of four leagues, was covered by wrecks,
which enabled us to form an estimate of the loss that we had
sustained at the battle of Aboukir. To procure a few nails, or a
few iron hoops, the wandering Arabs were employed in burning on the
beach the masts, gun-cariages, boats, &c. which had been
constructed at so vast an expence in our ports."

In both these accounts it is sufficiently manifest, that the French were
fully convinced there could be no possibility of denying their defeat,
however they might seek to disguise the extent of their disaster. The
grand designation of their expensive and numerous armament was thus, at
a single blow, completely frustrated: and, instead of finding
themselves, flushed with success, in a treacherously subjugated country,
with a view of extending their conquest to