On one such inspection I gave my horse to an Arab lad to hold. A few minutes afterwards there was the crack of a pistol. I ran out, and there was the boy lying on the ground a bullet-wound in his chest. To satisfy his curiosity he had been fingering the 4-barrel Lancaster pistol in the holster, and that was the end of _him_, poor lad. Upon another occasion, when I was at work in one of my stations, a sudden tumult arose in the street. I went put, to perceive a huge Irish Marine Artilleryman engaged in furious conflict with five or six men of the patrol. They had got handcuffs on him, and he was fighting with manacled hands. I asked the sergeant what was the matter. "He's drunk, sir. We are going to lock him up." "Let him go," I said. The men fell back; and the Irishman, seeing an iron railing, raised his hands above his head and brought them down upon the iron, smashing the handcuffs, and turned upon me like a wild beast at bay. The man was in a frenzy. Standing directly in front of him, I spoke to him quietly. "Now, my lad, listen to me. You're an Irishman." He looked down at me. "You're an Irishman, and you've had a little too much to drink, like many of us at times. But you are all right. Think a moment. Irishmen don't behave like this in the presence of the enemy. Nor will you. Why, we may be in a tight place to-morrow, and who's going to back me then? You are. You're worth fifty of the enemy. You're the man I want." As I talked to him, the expression of his face changed from desperation to a look of bewilderment, and from bewilderment to understanding; and then he suddenly broke down. He turned his head aside and cried. I told the sergeant to take him away and give him some tea. Having heard from the Governor of Alexandria that a {198} quantity of arms was concealed in a village lying a few miles outside the city, I took thither a party of Egyptian military police and a guard of Marines. On the way we were joined by some 800 British soldiers, who surrounded the village, while the police conducted a house-to-house search. A certain newspaper correspondent accompanied me. The police knocked at the door of a house, and received no reply; whereupon the correspondent drew his revolver and incontinently blew in the lock. I told him that he had no right to do such a thing; that he might have killed innocent persons; and that he must not do it again. "Oh, but," says he, "you don't understand how to do these things." I requested him to understand that I was provost-marshal, and that unless he obeyed orders, he would be sent back to Alexandria. "Oh, but," says he, "you can't do that. You don't understand----" "Sergeant!" said I, "a file of Marines." "Oh, but," protested the correspondent, "you can't----" "Sergeant, take this gentleman back to Alexandria." It was a long walk and a hot walk home.