s and the
number of the sorties. Sidney Smith's sorties actually exceeded in
number and vehemence Napoleon's assaults. He broke the strength of
Napoleon's attacks, that is, by anticipating them. A crowd of Turkish
irregulars, with a few naval officers leading them, and a solid mass of
Jack-tars in the centre, would break from a sally-port, or rush
vehemently down through the gap in the wall, and scour the French
trenches, overturn the gabions, spike the guns, and slay the guards.
The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged, however, by
the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the sortie. But the
process was renewed the same night or the next day with unlessened fire
and daring. The French engineers, despairing of success on the
surface, betook themselves to mining; whereupon the besieged made a
desperate sortie and reached the mouth of the mine. Lieutenant Wright,
who led them, and who had already received two shots in his sword-arm,
leaped down the mine followed by his sailors, slew the miners,
destroyed their work, and safely regained the town.

The British sustained one startling disaster. Captain Miller of the
_Theseus_, whose ammunition ran short, carefully collected such French
shells as fell into the town without exploding, and duly returned them
alight, and supplied with better fuses, to their original senders. He
had collected some seventy shells on the _Theseus_, and was preparing
them for use against the French. The carpenter of the ship was
endeavouring to get the fuses out of the loaded shells with an auger,
and a middy undertook to assist him, in characteristic middy fashion,
with a mallet and a spike-nail. A huge shell under his treatment
suddenly exploded on the quarter-deck of the _Theseus_, and the other
sixty-nine shells followed suit. The too ingenious middy disappeared
into space; forty seamen, with Captain Miller himself, were killed; and
forty-seven, including the two lieutenants of the ship, the chaplain,
and the surgeon, were seriously wounded. The whole of the poop was
blown to pieces, and the ship was left a wreck with fire breaking out
at half-a-dozen points. The fire was subdued, and the _Theseus_
survived in a half-gutted condition, but the disaster was a severe blow
to Sir Sidney's resources.

As evening fell on May 7, the white sails of a fleet, became visible
over the sea rim, and all firing ceased while besiegers and besieged
watched the approaching ships.