with whom it was crowded were swept away by the fire of the _Queen
Charlotte_, which had ruined the fortifications there before the
engagement became general, and then crumbled and brought down the
Lighthouse Tower and its batteries. The _Leander's_ guns, which
commanded the principal gate of the city opening on the mole, prevented
the escape of any survivors.

The batteries defending the mole were three times cleared by the British
fire, and three times manned again.

'The Dey,' wrote a British officer on the _Leander_, 'was
everywhere offering pecuniary rewards for those who would stand against
us; eight sequins were to be given to every man who would endeavour to
extinguish the fire. At length a horde of Arabs were driven into the
batteries under the direction of the most devoted of the Janissaries and
the gates closed upon them.'

Soon after the battle began, the enemy's flotilla of gunboats advanced,
with a daring which deserved a better fate, to board the _Queen
Charlotte_, and a few guns from the latter vessel sent thirty-three
out of thirty-seven to the bottom. Then followed the destruction of the
Algerine frigates and other shipping in the port, which were set on fire
by bombs and shells and burned together with the storehouses and the
arsenal.

The Algerines, none the less, made a most determined resistance, and
maintained a fire upon the squadron for no less than eleven hours. Young
Charles Yorke was in command of a tender of the flagship which was
moored near to his parent ship, and was consequently in the midst of the
hottest fire, within sixty yards of the mouths of the enemy's guns,