The service being most pressing, we took them under convoy, and after a passage of three weeks, made the low sandy coast to the westward of Alexandria, on which were growing a few date or palm trees, planted in a cluster. We got off the port on the following day, where we no sooner discovered the British squadron, under Capt. Benjamin Hallowell, in the _Tigre_ (80), all snug, than we hove to; and putting the general and his staff on board one of the transports, started back to Messina. The _Tigre_ fired guns and made the signal of recall, which the captain, much to our satisfaction, would not notice, for we had no particular relish to exchange the chance of a good cruise, for the burning sands of Egypt, to fire at Turks behind sand banks and stone walls. This, however, very nearly got Captain Peter Parker into a serious scrape; for the gallant old Ben. was most wroth, and nothing saved him from a court martial but his being a great friend of Lord Collingwood. On our return to Sicily we went from Messina to Palermo, and from thence to succour the fortress of Gaeta, near Terracina, besieged by Marshal Massena, with 30,000 men. We ran in and engaged a battery and a French man-of-war brig near Mola. The battery was thrown up in Cicero’s Garden. Night, and a very heavy thunder storm coming on, which blew dead on shore, obliged us to haul off and get an offing; the brig taking advantage of the darkness, cut her cable, and got safe into Naples. A few days afterwards, I went with some other officers on shore, to be introduced to the Prince of Hesse Philippsthal, who commanded the fortress, and to look round the works and observe the French lines. It appearing to our captain that we could flank the enemy’s works to the N.W. of the peninsula, with the ship, in the afternoon, we stood in and fired a few broadsides, which put them to confusion, however the wind failing obliged us to haul off. A day or two afterwards the wind changing and permitting us to do the same thing, again we stood in, but the French had got something prepared for us this time, in the shape of a good masked battery, which was so well directed that every shot hit us, and we were glad to get off with the loss of three men badly wounded; one poor fellow lost both his legs, another his right leg, and the third was severely wounded by a splinter. We took the hint and did not go there any more. Shortly after this, Rear-Admiral Sir Sidney Smith came and assumed the command of the squadron, he used to send the launches, armed with a carronade, every dark night to flank the French camp on the Terracina side, with orders the moment the gun was fired to pull either to starboard or port, in order to avoid the enemy’s shot. Our being low on the water prevented them seeing us, so that they could only fire at the flashes of our guns. Some shot occasionally passed over us, but the greater part went either to the right or left. One