rewarded for the sound blows they received in
the course of the sport, by a few piastres; at
another, two seamen hung by the spanker-
boom until one cried quarter. Whether at sea,
or in port, the pasha wanted some game,
some luxury, to while away the hours. But
he was no worse than the generality of officers
he commanded. Nourrez, for instance, the
captain of the finest frigate in the Turkish
navy, had been within six months a royal
page, and had never been to sea before. But
then his second in command was more
experienced. Our English sailor has described
the government of an Ottoman ship of war
twenty years ago in a few words. " The
commander of an Ottoman ship of war,
whatever duty is performing, sits on his bench on
the quarter-deck, leaving the second captain
to carry on the war. By the time that his
chibouque wants replenishing, something may
happen to disturb him; if a squall, a sail
splits; if an action, the shot come in. In
either case he gets nervous, and imagines
faults in his subordinates. He jumps into
his slippers, and gives orders that cannot be
understood; seizes a speaking trumpet; knocks
down the second captain; runs forward on
the forecastle; repeats the same operation on
the boatswain; then returns to smoke another
pipe, exclaiming, ' Mashallah! ' "

Our fleet, of which the frigate commanded
by Nourrez formed part, consisted of three
brigs, five corvettes, three frigates, and
one three-decker. On board these ships,
were men who had fought at Navarino;
some of these (the pilot, and captain
of the Selimier, for instance), were brave
men and experienced seamen. This
respectable force, or rather this force that
should have been respectable, sailed out of
the Bosphorus behind those beautiful gulls,
tame as doves, so ardently admired and
protected by the Osmanlis, which float about
the cypresses of Buyukderé, or skim round
about the vessels and caiques. It was with
ill-concealed fear that the Turks found
themselves in quest of the enemy; and the
suggestions of the English captain that they
should clear out Sevastopol, or perform some
striking exploit, met with the coldest
response. Indeed, the Osmanlis were little
prepared to meet even the most timid enemy.
All their shot was so bad that it broke by the
concussion at the bore, and the English
captain declared that the Selimier would have
been an easy prize to an English frigate in
twenty minutes. Her crew of fourteen
hundred men (speaking twenty different tongues),
drilled by aid of the topchi bashi's rattan,
were in as disorderly a state as it was
possible for them to be in. They were laziness
personified. The fine ship was a floating
castle of indolence. The gunners could
manage to load, without putting the shot
before the cartridge; but they never
thought of stopping the vent. To be sure
the loss of a man's arm was not much. As
to pointing the guns at the object it was
desirable to hit, they made no pretence of
possessing any knowledge of the way to go to
work, and the whole broadside would be fired,
with every gun wide of the intended mark.
The quarters were magnificent, but the
matches were fastened to spiked sticks,
and stuck about the decks in the most
dangerous disorder. There were guns on board,
which none of the crew had the courage to fire
—not even the comboradgi, who had been
drafted on board, specially for this duty. All
ran away when the English sailor fired, to try
the effect of the seventy-five pound granite
balls with which they were charged.

The prevailing carelessness with the matches
excited the Englishman's apprehension, and
he requested permission to examine the powder
magazine. The captain very nervously
assented, and the Englishman left the old
man vigorously handling his comboloyo. The
visitor was accompanied by the topchi bashi
and four mates, each carrying a crazy lanthorn,
from which they wished to withdraw the candle,
that their distinguished guest might the more
easily admire the arrangements. These
arrangements consisted of an entire absence of
fire-screens and cartridge-boxes; the English
sailor seeing the carelessness with which
unprotected powder was carried along the decks,
past flaming matches, thought that the Turks
were their own most formidable enemies.

Still, in the face of the prevailing ignorance
of naval affairs, the English sailor endeavoured
to persuade the capitan pasha to sail for
Sirepolis and Varna—even to Sevastopol—to
damage the Russian shipping at these ports,
and then to return and force a passage; but
a council of war rejected the proposal, and
the Turkish fleet very cautiously continued to
seek the enemy, in the hope that the enemy
might not make his appearance. The pasha
possibly felt that an engagement might interfere
with the enjoyment of his chibouque,
or damage his natural relish for pilaff. And
he was right. The danger he ran was not
insignificant on board the Selimier, a ship that
had no gunners, and was manned by a crew
who went to sleep on their watch at night,
with the lower deck ports up. One night
this carelessness or ignorance would have
sent the noble ship to the bottom, had not
our English friend been awake to notice that
all the crew were fast asleep, and that the
vessel was moving ahead, with her royals set,
her yards anyhow, and her lower ports open.
A squall was rapidly forming, and the Englishman
had barely time to kick two or three
fellows into a perfectly wakeful condition to
trim and shorten sail, when it burst. The
capitan crept out of his little box, only to
order the chief of the watch to be thrown
overboard immediately for his negligence;—from
this fate, however, the Englishman saved the
unhappy wretch, who repaid this intercession
with his lasting enmity.

At length, after many days of idle cruising,