SIDNEY SMITH  
On the 18th, at daybreak, while the army was crossing the little stream of the Kerdaneah, on a bridge thrown over it during the night, Bonaparte, accompanied only by Roland de Montrevel, the Sheik of Aher, and the Comte de Mailly, whom he was utterly unable to reconcile to his brother's death, do what he would, ascended a little hill not far from the town to which he had laid siege.
From its summit he could see the whole country, including not only the two English vessels, "Tiger" and "Theseus," rocking upon the breast of the sea, but also the troops of the Pasha, occupying all the gardens around the city.
"Let all that rabble be dislodged from those gardens," he said, "and driven back into the town."
As he had addressed no one in particular, all three young men started off like three hawks in pursuit of the same prey. But he cried in his harsh voice: "Roland! Sheik of Aher!"
The two young men, when they heard their names, stopped their horses, which were tugging at their bits, and returned to their places beside the commander-in-chief. Mailly went on with a hundred sharpshooters, a like number of grenadiers and voltigeurs, and spurring his horse to a gallop, charged at their head.
Bonaparte had great confidence in the omens of war. It was for that reason that he had been so greatly displeased with Croisier's hesitation during their first engagement with the Bedouins, and had reproached him so bitterly for it.
He could see the movements of the troops through his glass, which was an excellent one, from where he stood.[Pg 595] He saw Eugene de Beauharnais and Croisier, who had not dared to speak to him since that unfortunate day at Jaffa, take command, the former of the grenadiers and the latter of the sharpshooters, while Mailly, with the utmost deference to his companions, led the voltigeurs.
If the commander-in-chief was looking for a ready omen he should have been content. While Roland was impatiently gnawing at his silver mounted riding-whip, and the Sheik of Aher on the contrary was watching the fray with all the patience and calmness of an Arab, Bonaparte saw the three detachments pass through the ruins of a village, a Turkish cemetery, and a little wood whose freshness plainly showed that it was watered by a spring, and hurl themselves upon the enemy in spite of the brisk firing of the Arnauts and the Albanians, whom he recognized by their magnificent gold embroidered costumes and their long silver-mounted rifles, and rout them at the first charge.
The firing on the French side began vigorously, and continued with increasing vigor, while above it they could hear the loud explosion of the hand-grenades, which the French soldiers threw with their hands, and with which they tormented the fugitives.
They all arrived about the same time at the foot of the ramparts; but the posterns being closed behind the Mussulmans, and the walls being enveloped with a girdle of fire, the three hundred Frenchmen were forced to beat a retreat, after having killed about one hundred and fifty of the enemy.
The three young men had displayed marvellous gallantry, and had performed prodigies of valor in their emulation of each other.
Eugene had killed an Arnaut, who was a head taller than he, in a hand-to-hand encounter; Mailly had approached within ten paces of a group which was making a stand, had discharged both barrels of his pistol at them, and had then rejoined his own men with a single bound. Croisier, for his part, had sabred two Arabs who had attacked him at the same time, cutting open the head of one[Pg 596] of them and breaking the blade of his sabre in the breast of the second, and had returned with the bloody hilt dangling from his wrist.
Bonaparte turned to the Sheik of Aher and said: "Give me your sword in exchange for mine." And he detached his own sword from his belt and handed it to the Sheik.
The latter kissed the hilt, and hastily handed him his own.
"Roland," said Bonaparte, "go and present my compliments to Eugene and De Mailly; as for Croisier, you will simply say to him: 'Here is a sword which the commander-in-chief has sent you. He has been watching you.'"
Roland set off at a gallop. The young men to whom Bonaparte had sent these congratulations leaped in their saddles for joy, and embraced each other. Croisier, like the Sheik of Aher, kissed the hilt of the sword which had been sent him, threw away the scabbard and broken hilt of the old one, and put the one Bonaparte had given him at his belt, saying: "Thank the commander-in-chief for me, and say to him that he will have reason to be satisfied with me at the first assault."
The entire army had gradually ascended the hill where Bonaparte was stationed like an equestrian statue. The soldiers shouted with delight when they saw their comrades drive the Maugrabins before them as the wind scatters the sand of the sea. Like Bonaparte, the army could see no great difference between the fortifications of Saint-Jean d'Acre and those of Jaffa; and, like Bonaparte, they did not doubt that the city would be taken at the second or third assault.
The French were ignorant that there were two men within the walls of Saint-Jean d'Acre who were worth more in themselves than a whole army of Mussulmans.
They were Sidney Smith, the English Admiral who commanded the "Tiger" and the "Theseus," which were gracefully cradled on the waters of the Gulf of Carmel, and Colonel Phélippeaux, who had charge of the defensive[Pg 597] works and the fortress of Djezzar the Butcher. Phélippeaux had been Bonaparte's friend and schoolfellow at Brienne, his rival at college and in his mathematical successes. Fortune, chance, or accident had now cast his lot among Bonaparte's foes.
Sidney Smith, whom the exiles of the 18th Fructidor had met at the Temple, had by a strange freak of fate escaped from his prison and reached London, where he resumed his place in the English army just at the time of Bonaparte's departure from Toulon.
It was Phélippeaux who had undertaken the rescue of Sidney Smith, and he had succeeded in his daring enterprise. False orders had been prepared, under the pretext of removing the captive from one prison to another. A stamped fac-simile of the minister of police's signature had been obtained at a heavy price. From whom? From him perhaps; who knows?
Under the name of Loger, and attired in an adjutant-general's uniform, Sidney Smith's friend had presented himself at the prison and exhi............