BENGAZI. 305 stance of their having seen us employed in making plans and drawings of their fort and harbour, all contributed to strengthen their suspicions and their fears ; and they soon began to consider our residence among them as, in some way, connected with the Greeks.

While their minds were thus prepared, it unluckily happened one evening just before sunset, that some hard clouds had formed themselves on the horizon, into shapes which they conceived to resemble ships under sail ; the appearance soon excited the greatest alarm, and many an eager eye was fixed upon the formidable armada which imagination had suggested to the terrified Arabs*. Before they could be satisfied that there was no foundation for their fears, it was too dark to distinguish anything more; and the greatest confusion very shortly prevailed in every part of Bengazi. The men now began to prepare their fire-arms, and the signal to assemble was everywhere repeated ; the women and children running about in the greatest terror, calling out that the Christians were coming to murder them !

The disturbance was not long unknown to our party, for our door shortly became the centre of confusion ; a mob of Arabs was very soon collected about it, who manifested the most hostile feeling, and the street rang with invectives against the Nasdrasj-. It would have gone hard with any Christian who had been found unarmed in ♦ About the same time some high poles had been erected by our party, on the sand hills to the eastward of the town, as objects from which to take angles for the survey ; and these were now considered to have been placed there as signals to regulate the motions of the enemy’s fleet.

t The Arab term for all who profess Christianityi