But when dark night came on, and, with saturated clothing, they threw themselves down, in the drenching rain, for their night’s bivouac, they remembered with pleasure the star-spangled firmament and the dry sands of cloudless, rainless Egypt. The march of a few days brought them to Gaza. Here they encountered another division of the Turkish army. Though headed by the ferocious Achmet himself, the Turks were, in an hour, dispersed before the resistless onset of the French, and all the military stores, which had been collected in the place, fell into the hands of the conqueror. But perils were now rapidly accumulating around the adventurous band. England, with her invincible fleet, was landing men, and munitions of war and artillery, and European engineers, to arrest the progress of the audacious and indefatigable victor. The combined squadrons of Turkey and Russia, also, were hovering along the coast, to prevent any possible supplies from being forwarded to Napoleon from Alexandria. Thirty thousand Turks, infantry and horsemen, were marshaled at Damascus. Twenty thousand were at Rhodes. Through all the ravines of Syria, the turbaned Musselmans, with gleaming sabres, were crowding down to swell the hostile ranks, already sufficiently numerous to render Napoleon’s destruction apparently certain. Still unintimidated, Napoleon pressed on, with the utmost celerity, into the midst of his foes. On the 3d of March, twenty-three days after leaving Cairo, he arrived at Jaffa, the ancient Joppa. This place, strongly garrisoned, was surrounded by a massive wall flanked by towers. Napoleon had no heavy battering train, for such ponderous machines could not be dragged across the desert. He had ordered some pieces to be forwarded to him from Alexandria, by small vessels, which could coast near the shore. But they had been intercepted and taken by the vigilance of the English cruisers. Not an hour, however, was to be lost. From every point in the circumference of the circle, of which his little band was the centre, the foe was hurrying to meet him. The sea was whitened with their fleets, and the tramp of their dense columns shook the land. His only hope was, by rapidity of action, to defeat the separate divisions before all should unite. With his light artillery he battered a breach in the walls, and then, to save the effusion of blood, sent a summons to the commander to surrender. The barbarian Turk, regardless of the rules of civilized warfare, cut off the head of the unfortunate messenger, and raised the ghastly, gory trophy, upon a pole, from one of the towers. This was his bloody defiance and his threat. The enraged soldiers, with extraordinary intrepidity, rushed in at the breach and took sanguinary vengeance. The French suffered very severely, and the carnage, on both sides, was awful. Nothing could restrain the fury of the assailants, enraged at the wanton murder of their comrade. For many hours a scene of horror was exhibited in