26 feet (French) water ; but Admiral Brueys, considering the risk too great to attempt entering the port with his line-of-battle ships, the smallest of which drew 22 feet, preferred remaining at Aboukir ; where we will leave him awhile in the enjoyment of his apparent security, and revert to the proceedings of one who soon put that security to the test.

Notwithstanding the inconvenient situations of the watering-places in the port of Syracuse, the indefatigable exertions of the officers and men of the British fleet procured, by the fifth day, an ample supply ; to which was added, owing solely to the influence of Lady Hamilton, the British ambassador's wife, with the court of "neutral" Naples, a sufficient quantity of fresh beef and vegetables. Thus victualled and refreshed, the ships of the fleet, on the 24th and 25th, again put to sea. All the accounts, received while at Syracuse, agreed in representing that the French fleet had not been seen, either in the Archipelago or the Adriatic, and yet that it had not gone down the Mediterranean : hence no other conclusion remained, than that it still lay to the eastward, and that Egypt, after all, was, or had been, its destination. To be certain it was so, the rear-admiral bent his course for the Morea ; and on the 28th, being off Cape Gallo, despatched the Culloden to Coron. The Turkish governor behaved very graciously to Captain Troubridge, permitting him to take out as a prize a French wine-vessel at anchor in the port ; and he dismissed him with a yet more valuable present, in the communication, that the French fleet had been seen about four weeks since on the coast of Candia, steering south-east. South-east, then, was steered by the British ; and a fresh breeze astern, with a heavy following sea, drove them rapidly towards the goal of their hopes.

On the 1st of August, at 10 a.m., the towers or minarets of Alexandria, the Pharos, and Pompey's pillar, made their welcome appearance ; and soon the two ports, which, when last seen, had been unpeopled and solitary, displayed to the view a wood of masts : as an unerring sign, too, of who were now the occupants of the city, the French flag waved upon its walls. The two British look-out ships, the Alexander and Swiftsure, as they drew nearer, caused a general disappointment to their friends in the offing, by the signal their duty obliged them to make, that the enemy's fleet did not form part of the vessels at anchor ; that there appeared to be but eight ships of war, of various sizes (the Causse, Dubois, and six ex-Venetian frigates), and that the remainder were transports and merchantmen. The disappointment to the fleet was, however, of short duration ; as the Zealous, a little before 1 p.m., just as the Pharos tower bore from her south-south-west, distant four or five leagues, signalled, that 17 ships of war, 13 or 14 of them formed in line of battle, lay at anchor in a bay upon her larboard bow.

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