The next day the answer came, "Delighted at news. Tell boys remain Alexandria. Ship coming out with cargo coal."
CHAPTER XIV.
A SET OF RASCALS.
The work of pacification had gone on steadily. It was on Thursday evening, the 13th of July, the boys had returned to the town. On the 15th Captain Fisher, who was in command of the naval party on shore, marched through the streets disarming the Egyptian soldiers, of whom there were large numbers still in the place, and had a skirmish with a strong party of them at the Rosetta gate. Lord Charles Beresford was in charge of the police arrangements, and with a force of marines and three hundred disarmed Egyptian soldiers was occupied in stamping out the fires and in arresting marauders. A large number of Arabs were also enlisted in the service.
The population now began to return to the city. Many of the lower class of Greeks and Italians landed from the vessels, and were a source of continual trouble, as they at once took to plundering what the natives had left.
On Monday morning the 38th Regiment and the third battalion of the 60th Rifles arrived in the harbour, and were at once landed. General Sir Archibald Alison also arrived and assumed the command on shore, and the following day a body of troops marched along the line of railway to Ramleh, six miles distant. Ramleh stands at the point where a narrow neck of land connects the peninsula on which Alexandria stands with the mainland. Along this narrow isthmus run the road, the railway, and the Sweet-water Canal, and here there is a pumping-station, by which water is raised to a higher level for the supply of Alexandria.
The khedive has a summer palace at Ramleh, and here are a large number of pretty villas, the summer abodes of the merchants of Alexandria. It was an important position, for here any advance upon the city from the east could be readily checked.
Thursday was a busy day for the police and troops in Alexandria, for a high wind got up and fanned the masses of embers into flames again, and serious fires broke out in several places. The boys were busily engaged all day. They acted now as aides-de-camp to Lord Charles Beresford, carrying his orders to the various working parties, and making themselves generally useful.
Lord Charles had established himself with his officers in an empty house, and the three boys had a room assigned to them here. The party all messed together. In the evening Lord Charles said to the officers, "I hear that the khedive's people have got news that Arabi is damming up the Sweet-water Canal. We shall have a deal of trouble if he does. There is very bad news, too, from the country. They say that everywhere except at Cairo the natives have risen and massacred the Europeans. Arabi has ordered all the able-bodied men in the country to join the army."