The Greek government sent supplies enough to keep the men under arms from starving, and the Turkish could send no more troops, so that there were only, after garrisoning the fortresses, about 5000 troops available for any operations.

One of the European officers told me that the total force remaining out of eighty-two battalions, of which most had come to Crete full, was 17,000 men effective.

A party of the consuls and officers of the men-of-war in the port made a picnic at Meskla in August, and witnessed a fight between the Cretans and Zurba and the Turks at Lakus, in the course of watching which I had a shot fired at me from the Turkish trenches, which came so near that the lead of the bullet striking a rock at my side spattered me from head to foot, and as we returned to Canea we were surrounded by the insurgents at Theriso, having lost our road in the dark, and most of the party taken prisoners.

I and my veteran cavass, Hadji Houssein, broke through with a guest,--Colonel Borthwick, an English officer in the Turkish service,--escaping down a breakneck hillside in the dark to save him and his two orderlies from capture by the insurgents, a trifling thing for us who were known as the friends of the Cretans, but a serious matter possibly for Turkish soldiers in fez and uniform.

We made a reckless race down the mountain, leaving our horses and my photographic apparatus under the care of Dickson, and just succeeded in reaching the Turkish outpost in advance of a party of Cretans who followed the road down to cut us off.