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Nothing was more easy than to defend it; yet on the 5th of August the Egyptians made themselves masters of it, after an action of two hours. The passage of the Beylau delivered to the conqueror Alexandretta, its immense magazines, and one hundred pieces of cannon. The Turks, instead of rallying in the rear, in the favourable positions which the ground afforded, fled in the direction of Adana.
Let us then 'scrap' the existent Bagdad route altogether, and consider not what the Germans want, but what we want, which, as has been already stated, is a direct land communication with suitable Mediterranean ports. Of those there are three obvious ones, Alexandretta, Tripoli, and Beirut, of which Beirut is a long way the first in importance and potentiality of increased importance.
Cilicia, I might mention parenthetically, is usually included in the proposed Armenian state, and Armenians have anticipated that Alexandretta would be their port on the Mediterranean, but, while the peacemakers at Paris have been discussing the question, Italy has been pouring her troops into this region, having already occupied the hinterland as far back as Konia.
All the news of Asia from Alexandretta to the Persian Gulf and from Northern Turkestan to South Arabia reaches Grim's ears sooner or later. He earns his bread and butter knitting all that mess of cross-grained information into one intelligible pattern; after which he interprets it and acts suddenly without advance notices.
Any man but myself would have kept her under lock and key and established a guard round the house. Any man but myself would have never let her out of his sight until he had married her, until he had tracked Hamdi and his myrmidons back to Alexandretta. "Abduction has happened," I cried wildly.
The enemy had constructed trenches covering Aleppo, and at first showed signs of holding them. But, after our armoured cars had got into touch, and our airmen had bombed them, the enemy decided to evacuate, and withdrew to the hills towards Alexandretta. Aleppo was entered by our cavalry on the 26th October, and the station was seized at Muslimie, the junction of the Baghdad Railway.
At Naples I picked up a Messageries Maritimes steamer and began a circular tour in the Levant. At Alexandretta I went ashore, and inquired my way to the dwelling of the Prefect of Police. I did not call on Hamdi Effendi. But I wandered round the walls and wondered in a moody, heart-achey way where it was that Carlotta sat when Harry came along and whistled her like a tame falcon to his arm.
Not finding us where he expected, and being persuaded we ought to have arrived there had Alexandria been the place of our destination; he sailed for Alexandretta in Syria, whither he imagined we had gone to effect a landing. This error saved the expedition a second time. Bonaparte, on hearing the details which the French Consul communicated, resolved to disembark immediately.
As we arrived at this place after sunset, which ends the Turkish day, we were obliged to lie here twenty-four hours to get landing. An hour before sunset it is twenty-three o'clock, an hour after it is one. That's the way the Turks tell time. On the morning of the second day after our arrival at this struggling little port, our anchor touched bottom in the beautiful bay of Alexandretta.
Instead of taking any measures of defence, he set out for Antioch, with the view of effecting a junction with some troops in the neighbourhood of Aleppo; but finding no provisions in those districts, he returned by forced marches to Alexandretta, after fatiguing his troops by a march of eight hundred leagues.
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