THE BOMBARDMENT OF ALEXANDRIA. 287 the limits of my space and the scope of my narrative will permit of my giving, I would recommend my friend Mr. Charles Royle's excellent narrative of the Egyptian campaigns, ,-To return then to my story. On the day following the massacres, the Khedive, accompanied by Dervish Pasha, left Cairo for Alexandria. The British fleet , was then anchored in the harbour, within a short 'I distance of the palace of Ras-el-Tin, where hisi Highness, as usual, took up his abode. A more difficult position than the one he was then placed in cannot well be conceived. His life, so long as he remained on Egyptian soil, was absolutely at the mercy of the insurgents, who distrusted him, not altogether without reason. At any moment it lay in the power of Arabi and his colleagues to proclaim his deposition and pronounce his death. It was open to him to secure his personal safety by accepting the refuge offered him on the English fleet. His Highness, however — in common, for that matter, with the rest of the world — had no certainty as to how far the British Government was prepared to carry out armed intervention, and in the event of their not being so prepared, his restoration to the throne, or even his return to Egypt, became extremely problematical. A consideration which, I think, weighed with him yet more strongly, was that his pride of birth and race and creed forebade his accepting the hospitality proffered him by England. After all, he was still' Khedive of Egypt, the nominal ruler of a country I 1