ofitable game. The Turkish ports were not warlike,
and the Turkish trading ships were not prepared for fighting. In May,
a formidable crowd of vessels left the islands on a cruise, from which
they soon returned with an immense store of booty. Early in June, the
best Turkish fleet that could be brought together, consisting of two
line-of-battle ships, three frigates, and three sloops, went out to
harass, if not to destroy, the swarm of smaller enemies. Jakomaki
Tombazes, with thirty-seven of these smaller enemies, set off to meet
them, and falling in with one of the ships, gave her chase, till, in
the roads of Eripos, she was attacked on the 8th of June, and, with
the help of a fireship, destroyed with a loss of nearly four hundred
men. That victory caused the flight of the other Turkish vessels, and
was the beginning of much cruel work at sea and with ships, which,
not often daring to meet in open fight, wrought terrible mischief to
unprotected ports and islands.

The mischief wrought upon the land was yet more terrible. A seething
tide of Greek and Moslem blood heaved to and fro, as, during the
second half of 1821, each party in turn gained temporary ascendency in
one district after another. Greeks murdered Turks, and Turks murdered
Greeks, with equal ferocity; or perhaps the ferocity of the Greeks,
stirred by bad leaders to revenge themselves for all their previous
sufferings, even surpassed that of the Turks. Of their cruelty a
glaring instance occurred in their capture of Navarino. The Turkish
inhabitants having held out as long as a mouthful of food was left
in the town, were forced to capitulate on the 19th of August. It was
promised that, upon their surrendering, the Greek vessels were to
convey them, their wearing apparel, and their household furniture,
either to Egypt or to Tunis. No sooner were the gates opened than
a wholesale plunder and slaughter ensued. A Greek ecclesiastic has
described the scene. "Women wounded with musket-balls and sabre-cuts
rushed to the sea, seeking to escape, and were deliberately shot.
Mothers robbed of their clothes, with infants in their arms, plunged
into the water to conceal themselves from shame, and they were then
made a mark for inhuman riflemen. Greeks seized infants from their
mothers' breasts and dashed them against the rocks. Children, three
and four years old, were hurled, living, into the sea, and left to
drown. When the massacre was ended, the dead bodies washed ashor