thus assailed by the horrible thought, while working at the blocks of concrete, which he mixed from morning till night, that in one such block he should ere long find a living tomb.
We need scarcely add that the thought drove him to desperation; but, poor fellow, he had by that time learned that the violence of despair could achieve nothing in the case of one on whose limbs heavy irons were riveted, and whose frame was beginning to break down under the protracted and repeated tortures to which it had been exposed.
Ah! how many wretched men had learned the same bitter lesson in the same accursed city in days gone by—whose groans and cries, though unrecorded by the pen of man, have certainly been inscribed in the book of God's remembrance, and shall yet be brought into a brighter light than that of terrestrial day!
Omar Dey was a man of energy and decision. The instant it became known to him that England was at last stirred up to resent the insults which had been heaped upon her and other nations by the Algerines, he set about making preparations for defence on the vastest possible scale.
It was a sight worth seeing—though we cannot afford space to describe it in detail—the hundreds of camels, horses, mules, and donkeys that trooped daily into the city with provisions and matériel of
