to propose that their ships should go to receive the disaffected volunteers, but with the condition that no non-combatants or Cretans should be accepted. None of the commanders were willing to accept the mission on these terms, except the French, and the gunboat which he commanded went, therefore, to Loutro, a port of Sphakia (the Port Phœnix of St. Paul), and embarked four hundred and eighty men, who were landed at Peiræus, where they were received with violence and insults by the excited populace, and some barely escaped paying the last penalty for their defection. CHAPTER VIII. The remaining auxiliaries, paralyzed by want of organization, the usual dissensions of the chiefs, and their mutual jealousies, even more than by their want of supplies, retreated before Mustapha, who, after some weeks of indecision, resumed his campaign; but, instead of following up his advantages by land, and getting possession of Omalos as a better base of operations, and preventing the Cretans from reoccupying it, he embarked his troops at Suia, and attempted to land at St. Rumséli, the entrance of the ravine of Samariá, the stronghold and place of refuge _par excellence_ of Sphakia, and where, at this time, were gathered thousands of women and children. This movement menaced too closely the mountaineers, who opposed the landing, and finally repelled the attack, as well as a subsequent one at Tripiti, nearer to Suia, when Mustapha returned to his camp in Selmos, and passed another period of inaction, during which the insurrectionary committees in Greece, admonished by the imminent danger the movement seemed to have evaded for the moment, renewed their efforts to send relief, and threw over other bodies of volunteers, mainly Mainotes, a hardy, courageous race, regarded as better irregulars even than the Albanians, who, landing in the eastern provinces, revived the insurrection where the government was ill able to meet it. The best of the volunteers, under Coroneos and Yennissarli, recovering from their demoralization by rest and the removal of the more disorderly elements, moved eastward to join the new bodies, leaving the Sphakiotes to guard their own country. If Mustapha, after the affair of Krustogherako, had followed the attack up with vigor, two weeks would have finished the insurrection. Even as it was, Sphakia being strongly disposed to purchase freedom from conquest by neutrality, and several of the captains having openly embraced the Turkish cause, there seemed very little hope for the prolongation of the insurrection, when another of those wanton acts of barbarity, which had on more than one occasion strengthened the insurgents instead of weakening their courage, gave it another jog.