Weeks passed.  The nervous strain became very great.  I found myself continually going unconsciously to my balcony, which commanded a wide range out to sea, telescope in hand, to see if the sail so long implored was in sight, though five minutes before I had seen nothing.  Finally there came a loathing at the sight of the masts of a steamer on the horizon, feeling that it would be only a Turkish man-of-war.  My children, for months, did not pass the threshold, though Laura insisted on showing her indifference to the danger by walking out; and one night when some mischievous Mussulmans started a cry of “Death to the Christians,” in the streets of Kalepa, and the entire Christian population in a few minutes were at our doors, beating to be admitted, the cavasses refusing to open without orders, she had flown to the door in her night-dress and thrown it open to the crowd, who passed the rest of the night sitting on the floor of the consulate.  The sentinel at the city gates, whose duty it was to salute as I passed, turned his face the other way, with a muttered “Dog of a Christian,” on which I called back Hadji Houssein, who was marching in front of me, and, ordering him to look the soldier well in the face, so that he might remember him, sent him directly to the governor to repeat what had passed, and demand summary punishment for the insult.  I was informed that the man had six weeks of prison.  I don’t believe he had a day, but the insults were stopped, which was what I wanted.  Of those weeks of intense, prolonged anxiety the impression remains indelible to this day.

The relief from the tension, grown almost unendurable, came with the arrival at Suda of the Psyche, with Admiral Lord Clarence Paget, direct from Constantinople, to inform us that the Arethusa frigate had been ordered to Crete.  If the Psyche had been a reprieve the Arethusa was a pardon.  The hilarious blue-jackets flying over the plains of Crete brought all the Mussulman world to its senses, and we took down our barricades; but for the poor Cretans there was no change,—­the Turks were so fully persuaded that England was with them that the severities towards the Christians underwent no amelioration, unless it be that the ostentatious brutality ceased, as the chiefs knew that they must keep up appearances.  We attended service on Sunday on board the Arethusa and stayed to luncheon, in the midst of which an orderly came down and whispered to Captain MacDonald, on which he turned to me, saying, “If you would like to see something pleasant, Mr. Stillman, you may go on deck.”  I reached the deck just in time to see the Ticonderoga round the point of the Suda island, entering Suda Bay.  Commodore Steedman, her commander, was an old friend, and, hearing at Trieste of the insurrection, came on his own initiative to give me the support my government had not thought worth its while to accord me.  He stayed a few days and sailed direct for Constantinople, which so impressed the authorities that I was no longer