BENGAZI. 
305 
stance of their having seen us employed in making plans and draw- 
ings 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 them- 
selves 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 
