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Not knowing that Norris was in the Downs, Saxe began immediately to embark his troops, but bad weather delayed the operation for three days, and so saved the expedition, exposed as it was in the open roads, from destruction by an attack which Norris was on the point of delivering with his flotilla of fireships and bomb vessels. The Brest squadron had an equally narrow escape.
The small boats had all been mustered out to tow the two ships in, when a slight breeze sprang up. The flotilla drifted inland just as three canoes, carved in bizarre shapes of birds' heads and eagle claws, came paddling across the inlet. Three savages were in one, six in the other, ten in the third.
The storm had also the effect of hindering the flotilla. On the other side of the river, Stuart-Wortley's friendlies had a sharp brush with some Dervishes, whom they had come upon raiding a village, whose inhabitants had not obeyed the Khalifa's orders to move into Omdurman.
It was in the following April that we went to war, and our first act was to send forth a destroyer flotilla to engage the U-boat in its hunting-ground, Among that flotilla, as said, were many of the craft which had rescued survivors of the Nantucket affair. They were ready and their officers were ready, nay, eager.
Several vessels had already been boarded and taken by the Turks, who massacred the crews before our eyes, and with barbarous ferocity showed us the heads of the slaughtered men. Perree, at considerable risk, despatched several persons to inform the General-in-Chief of the desperate situation of the flotilla.
Antwerp had promised Count Hohenlohe to support the attack on the dam by a flotilla from the town; three beacons on the principal tower were to be the signal that this was on the way.
Captain Finn's hospitality was not, however, so heavily taxed, for during the day a flotilla of fifteen canoes stopped before the plantation, and a dozen of French traders came up to the house. They were intimate friends of the captain, who had known them for a long time, and it fortunately happened that they were proceeding with goods to purchase the furs of the Pawnee Picts.
I had traveled on two ocean passenger-steamers, one private steamer of miniature size, a Russian corvette, a gunboat of the Siberian fleet, and two river boats of the Amoor flotilla. Not a serious accident had occurred to mar the pleasure of the journey. There had been discomforts, privations, and little annoyances of sufficient frequency, but they only added interest to the way.
Then a new difficulty arose: how was room to be found in a flotilla, which had lost nearly a third of its ships, for an army which was but a couple of thousand less than when it landed? Regretfully Charles gave orders for the horses to be cast into the sea, and, despite their masters' entreaties, favourite chargers of priceless value were slaughtered and thrown overboard.
Once clear of the passage, they formed in line abreast, the smaller boat between the two big ones, while one man, doubtless the leader of the expedition, stood in the stern- sheets, directing the movements of his little flotilla from time to time by a wave of his hand.
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