French troops were every day returning to the Regency, but the heat still favoured the Arabs. On the 24th July half the Bey’s bodyguard was missing, and the farm of Mustapha between Mater and Bizerta in Northern Tunis was pillaged by Arab cavalry. Under these circumstances Sy Ali Bey, now civilised and friendly, found the task of organising a native force one of peculiar delicacy and difficulty. The soldiers, who had not as yet actually deserted, were far more likely to keep him as a hostage or convey him against his will to the tents of Ali Ben Hlifa, than to join him in attacking their comrades or co-religionists, for whose proceedings they entertained a lively sympathy. On the 26th July a band of insurgents could be seen approaching Rades, which, as I have said before, is equally visible from Tunis and Goletta. A panic seized on the inhabitants of both places; business was suspended, shops closed, boats hired, and a general stampede prepared. The Bey ordered the bridge between Goletta and Rades to be broken down, and the passage to be guarded by artillery. A little later in the day the news came that a well-known Greek gentleman had been murdered in an outlying farm. The excitement then reached its culminating point, and an Arab attack was really apprehended. People in Tunis decided to fly to Goletta, and persons in Goletta determined to take refuge in Tunis. A crowd of Tunisian fugitives arrived by train at Goletta, but only to meet another mob of refugees waiting impatiently to take the return train to Tunis. The meeting of the two crowds formed a very amusing _tableau_, and the more so because a moment’s reflection must show that any attempt to invade two walled towns by the Arabs of the interior would be wholly out of the question.