United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
We lived for eleven days on melons and water, besides being momentarily exposed to the musketry of the Arabs and the fellahs. We luckily escaped with but a few killed and wounded. The rising of the Nile was only beginning. The shallowness of the river near Cairo obliged us to leave the xebec and get on board a djerm. We reached Gizeh at three in the afternoon of the 23d of July.
The cannonade which Bonaparte had heard since the morning, and the explosion of a Turkish gunboat, which was blown up by the artillery of the xebec, led him to fear that our situation was really perilous. He therefore made a movement to the left, in the direction of the Nile and Chebreisse, beat the Mamelukes, and forced them to retire on Cairo.
'Well, retorted Carmen, 'I'll make troughs for the flies to drink out of on your cheeks, and I'll paint a draught-board on them!* And thereupon, slap, bank! She began making St. Andrew's crosses on the girl's face with a knife she had been using for cutting off the ends of the cigars. * Pintar un javeque, "paint a xebec," a particular type of ship.
"Try you again, Roddy!" said he, shaking his pipe at me. "There was the Xebec frigate out of Barcelona with twenty thousand Spanish dollars aboard, which make four thousand of our pounds. Her hull should be worth another thousand. What's my share of that?" "A hundred pounds." "Why, the purser couldn't work it out quicker," he cried in his delight. "Here's for you again!
He was the master of a small three-masted vessel called a xebec, armed for privateering, the San Antonio, manned by Ivizans, engaged in constant strife with the galliots of the Algerian Moors and with the ships of England, the enemy of Spain. Riquer's name was known all over the Mediterranean. The event occurred in 1806.
Uncle Ventolera, not to be outdone, narrated tales of pirates and of valorous mariners of Iviza, bearing them out with the testimony of his father, who had been cabin boy on Captain Riquer's xebec, and which assaulted the frigate Felicidad, captained by the formidable corsair "the Pope."
But for that, not a single Mameluke would have escaped." "I thank you for my own part," replied I; "but in conscience could you have abandoned us, after taking away our horses, and making us go on board the xebec, whether we would or not?" He laughed, and then told me how sorry he was for the wound of Sucy, and the death of many useful men, whose places could not possibly be filled up.
Perree was on board the xebec 'Cerf'. He had commanded, under the General's orders, the naval forces in the Adriatic in 1797. Bonaparte placed on board the Cerf and the other vessels of the flotilla those individuals who, not being military, could not be serviceable in engagements, and whose horses served to mount a few of the troops.
The brig, which had been riding with her head to the west, came slowly round; the yards being squared in a slow fashion, in strong contrast to the active way in which they were generally handled. The captain watched the other craft, carefully. "The xebec and polacre are gaining on us, but we are going as fast through the water as the three master.
The third boat had come to a halt, less than seventy yards away. A score of bobbing heads were swimming for her, the nearer ones offering a fair mark for musketry. We held our fire, however, and watched them. The boat took in a dozen or so, and then, being dangerously overcrowded, left the rest to their fate, and headed back for the xebec. The swimmers clearly hoped nothing from us.
Word Of The Day