AFLOAT AGAIN. 12 J the grilled flesh of some goats which the men had caught; for all the provisions were in the nuggar and all the clothes and wraps.

It was bitterly cold, too, and a wind almost as strong as a hurricane was blowing, so that the men at the seriba had to scoop hollows in the ground to protect them a little from the biting blast; and the small-boat, in which a few men and a number of women had set off" from the nuggar without permission and had reached the spot where the seriba was built, could not be sent back, though a private of the Sussex, who had contrived to come with the truant party and reported their conduct, was sent up the shore to tell Gascoigne the boat was coming. The native crew could not row against wind and stream; and later on two Sussex men and two native sailors again strove to get back to the nuggar, but after two hours' hard work had to return. By that time it was known that the nuggar was aground on a rock close under the battery; for Gascoigne, finding the boat did not return, had tried to float past in the darkness, but had stuck fast. The Sussex private had come back to say that the nuggar was aground; and an hour past midnight a sailor, who had swum from the vessel to the right bank and made his way through the bush, brought the further message that she could not be got off" without the small-boat helping to lay out anchors.

By daylight the wind had abated and the boat got back; but with the dawn the firing commenced again, and a strange and joyful sight presented itself to the little force on the bank. There were the steamer and the nuggar: the fire from the former being sharp and continuous, especially as the Gardner gun was briskly at work. Then as the daylight broadened the steamer was seen to run freely past the nuggar and to bring up in the middle of the river, without ceasing to direct a telling fire against the fort. In less than a minute a small-boat shot out from the Es Safia and made for the nuggar. On that boat were Mr. Keppel, the second of Sir Charles Beresford's officers, and a crew of blue-jackets.

Sir Charles Wilson sent a number of men up the river to draw the attention of the enemy at the battery from the nuggar, which, with the rescuing boat, was only about 400 yards from the fort and