To him and his comrades the escape of the British
ships was a mystery. That they were made of iron they understood, but
had no idea of the enormous thickness of their sides; and could not even
imagine that ships could be built sufficiently strong to keep out the
missiles discharged by the immense cannons in the forts. That not even a
mast should have been knocked away seemed to them almost miraculous. In
point of fact the ships had been struck but once or twice with the
shells from these massive cannon. The Egyptian gunners were unaccustomed
to the use of the huge pieces, and had consequently aimed too high, and
the shell had passed either between the masts or far overhead.

Upon the other hand the smaller guns had been worked with accuracy, but
their missiles had dropped harmless from the iron plates of the ships.
The fire of the men-of-war had, in the first place, been directed mainly
against these great cannon. The machine-guns in the top had created
terrible havoc among the men who were carrying on the laborious and to
them difficult operation of loading them, while the huge shell from the
great guns had carried wholesale destruction among them. Thus the
powerful guns upon which the Egyptians had relied to beat off any
attack from the sea, had been fired but seldom, and one by one had been
dismounted or rendered unserviceable by the fire from the ships.

The gallantry with which the Egyptian gunners stuck to their work was
the object of surprise and admiration to the British sailors. It seemed
scarce possible that men could work under so tremendous a fire as that
to which they were exposed. The forts were literally torn to pieces, and
at the end of the day were little better than heaps of ruins scattered
thickly with the corpses of the Egyptian artillerymen.

"Well, what do you suppose they will be up to next, Jim?" Arthur Hill
asked when the door had again closed upon them.

"I suppose they will begin again to-morrow if these fellows have not had
enough of it. You see, they hardly fired a gun for the last three hours,
and as far as we could see the forts were pretty well knocked to pieces;
the one at the mouth of the harbour blew up, and there were several
other explosions. They held out a lot better than I thought they would
do, I must say, but I cannot believe they will be fools enough to go on
to-morrow."

They chatted for some time as to the chances of surrender or of
resistance to the last, and as to what