Drill was looked upon merely as an amusing interlude in the serious business of war and appreciated accordingly. It was an exhibition of the same spirit of cheerfulness which has made us so proud of our Tommies for "sticking it out" so heroically in the trenches. This spirit never left these gallant seamen till the last, for the account above quoted tells how, when one of them was brought to the ground by a bullet which broke the bones of his leg, while pursuing some of the enemy's riflemen, he "took off his tarpaulin hat and flung it with all his might after them, adding a wish, 'that it was an 18-pounder for their sakes!' The poor fellow was carried off by his comrades and taken to the hospital, where he died. Such were the men who fought our battles." At the landing in Aboukir Bay in 1801 a body of seamen under Sir Sidney Smith were of great assistance to our army--very badly provided with artillery with which to reply to the numerous French field-pieces. The seamen, however, landed some guns, dragged them to a good position among the sand-hills, and by their fire materially contributed to the victory which ensued. It was in the same part of the world--to be exact, on the coast of Syria--that some years afterwards, in 1840-1, a naval brigade from the Mediterranean fleet, under Sir Charles Napier, assisted by a reinforcement of the Royal Marines sent out from England, carried on a campaign against Mehemet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, who had revolted from the Sultan and forcibly occupied Syria. There were Turkish troops also engaged and a small detachment from one or two Austrian ships, but Sir Charles Napier was in charge of the operations, and no British soldiers, other than the few marines, took part in the campaign. Sir Charles, though a sailor, always thought that he was a soldier spoiled, and was very proud of the rank of Major-General which had been given him by the Portuguese Government about ten years before. He had seen a little fighting on shore in the Peninsula, and entered into this shore-going campaign with the greatest zest. The marines, who were formed into two battalions, did the greater part of the fighting on land, as the seamen were required to man the guns of their ships, which constantly co-operated with the land forces by bombarding the enemy's towns and positions; but the bluejackets took part in the storming of Tortosa--where they preceded the marines as a pioneer party to remove obstacles--the assault of a castle near Acre, the occupation of Tyre, and the capture of Acre and Sidon. The seamen and marines of the fleet engaged in the Chinese war of 1840-1 also did a considerable amount of shore work of which space precludes any account, the operations they were engaged in being so numerous and so scattered. But we may say that, generally speaking, the seamen acted as gunners, while the marines were employed as infantry.