Mustapha immediately retraced his steps to CanÉa, and, housing himself outside the walls, having sworn not to re-enter his capital until the insurgents had been subdued, called a council to plan measures to strike a quick blow at the insurrection before the effect of Arkadi should be felt in the public opinion of Europe. Up to that time the struggle had seemed to me a hopeless and insane one, and though my warmest sympathies had been, of course, with the Cretans, as victims of a monstrous injustice—a sequence of crimes—I had not dared utter a word of hope or encouragement in reply to all the earnest appeals to me by the friends of the insurrection. Now, seeing the enthusiasm that Arkadi excited amongst the insurgents and even the mutis (submitted Christians), I felt that there was a hope that Christendom would be compelled to listen to the history being enacted before it on this sea-girt mountain ridge. That the Pasha also felt this was evident both from his words and acts. He made new and more tempting offers to the Sphakiote chiefs, and employed the well-known appliances of Eastern politics to make friends amongst the insurgents, but with only partial success. At the same time, he made preparations for another attack on Sphakia, but this time from the west via Selinos. He, therefore, leaving Mehmet Pasha to guard Krapi with four or five battalions, concentrated all his available forces besides, at Alikianu, his point de dÉpart for the first Theriso campaign. All this country had been abandoned, and had to be reconquered, particularly Theriso, which, if unoccupied, would be a menace to his communications with CanÉa. At the same time, a concentration of the volunteers and insurgents took place in the plain of Omalos, by which alone access is had to Sphakia from this side. A force of volunteers recently landed were engaged in a foolish siege of Kissamos, a worthless position to either side, as it was commanded by the men-of-war, and could not be held if taken; and the different chiefs of the volunteers were kept ineffective by dissensions and jealousies amongst themselves, each refusing to obey any other. Coroneos and Zimbrakakis, however, united their forces to resist the attack on Omalos. The volunteers, under the command of Soliotis, a Hellenic officer, made a gallant defence of the position of Lakus, but were compelled to retreat to the upper ridges which border Omalos, while Theriso was abandoned before a flank movement of Mehmet Pasha, obliged temporarily to leave the Apokorona undefended. Omalos, however, resisted direct attack, and the Pasha moved round by the passes of Kissamos to the west of the mountains, devastating as he went, and driving before him all the non-combatants of the country he passed through. By this time the snow had fallen with unusual severity of cold for that climate, and the insurgents, although ill-provided against an inclemency they usually escaped from in the plains below, were in many respects better off than the troops, who were compelled to march through ravines which were often mountain torrents in this rainy season; and as they did not carry tents, that they might move with greater rapidity, and were often cut off from all communication with the base of supplies for days together by the rain filling the roads, at best only bad mule-paths, they suffered prodigiously without fighting or even the encouragement of the sack of villages. The Egyptians, clad only in linen which their climate required, perished by cold and wet in hundreds; pneumonia became an endemic in the army; and, to add to the misery, the beasts of burden perished under the hardships, and lined the paths with their corpses.

Mustapha was as merciless a commander as enemy, and, though the army was suffering extreme misery, he kept a vigilant watch for his opportunity, and when, after two weeks of fatiguing outpost duty, waiting in hunger, rain, snow, and frost, the Hellenes who guarded the difficult pass of St. Irene were frozen and starved into negligence, he made a dash, one foggy morning, surprised the post, and, taking possession of the heights crowning the ravine, his army defiled leisurely over into the valleys of Selinos. The Greeks moved over to the pass of Krustogherako, which admits to the plain of Omalos from the Selinos side, and the Pasha, believing a defence ready, encamped in the still undevastated valleys, and passed some days in burning and ravaging, destroying vineyards and mulberry-trees wherever they could be reached. The olive-trees, as the reliance of the future income of the island, were mostly spared.

Meanwhile, a "moral intervention" was being prepared, which brought respite to the insurrection and deranged all the plans of the Pasha. The atrocities of Arkadi had finally impressed public opinion with the conviction that the old barbarities of the Greek and Turkish wars were being perpetrated anew; and even the English consul at CanÉa became convinced that barbaric massacre and ravage were being employed as the means of subduing the spirit of the islanders, and had reported to his Government certain of these atrocities, remonstrating, at the same time, to the Commissioner. The reports of those consuls who had by this time become characterized as the "friends of the insurrection"—viz., Colucci (Italian), Dendrinos (Russian), Sacopoulos (Greek), and myself—had spread through the European journals the news of these barbarities and excesses to such a degree that remonstrances were made by the ambassadors at Constantinople, while the clear-headed and true-hearted Murray had from the beginning, with great justice and discrimination, measured the facts and manifested the warmest sympathy with the Cretans. At this juncture came H.B.M.'s sloop Assurance, Commander Pym, relieving the Wizard, ordered to Malta. We parted from our gallant protector with an emotion not easily comprehended by those who do not know the nature and nearness of the dangers of the previous four months, or how the resolute and outspoken manhood of the young officer in his one-gun steamer had stood so long between us and death, as the representative of a power in civilization which subsequent years made me honor more and more—the English navy. Fortunately, Pym had learned from Murray, in the few days which elapsed between the arrival of the Assurance and the departure of the Wizard, what was the real position of affairs, and followed the traditions of his predecessor. He had, moreover, a certain defiance of red-tape and a feverishness to distinguish himself which did not always measure carefully the purport of general orders, and which, perhaps, in battle would have made him turn a blind eye to a signal of recall, and now disposed him to abandon on any pretext the cold-blooded neutrality of his government.

Pym soon determined that a very small pretext would suffice to make him throw himself in the way of a decided intervention in behalf of the non-combatants, and did not fail to exert all his influence on Dickson to obtain an official request that he should cruise on the coast in advance of the Pasha's army, and to "seize every available opportunity for affording refuge to any Christian in distress who may seek protection on board his ship," and to convey such refugees to Greece. Pym had declared to me (and possibly to Dickson) that he should, on his own responsibility, take such a step if he did not get the requisition from the consul; and, on leaving for a run to Candia, said that he should go thence to Selinos and put himself in the way of humanity. Under these circumstances, Dickson's humanity, further stimulated by Murray's and Pym's enthusiasm, got the better of his official prepossessions, and, without waiting for a reply from his Government to a petition addressed to all the Christian powers to send ships to save the women and children exposed to such chances as those of Arkadi, had followed up his remonstrances to the Commissioner with a proposal to send a ship to pick up the families gathered before the army in its movement into Selinos. The Commissioner, still under the impression of the effect produced by recent events on European public opinion, dared not refuse his consent to such a demand from his best friend, and, it may be conceived, reluctantly, verbally, and evasively gave it. But Dickson, too honest and earnest to comprehend the duplicity, took him literally at his word. As a consequence of all these considerations and conclusions, the Assurance found herself at Suia of Selinos while Mustapha was pounding away at the passes, and took three hundred and fifteen women and children and twenty-five wounded men on board and transported them to PeirÆus.

No act could have been purer or more free from ulterior views than this of Pym's—an expression of what not only he, but all of his fellow-officers of the English navy whom I saw on the station, with one exception, felt—the compassionate desire to stand between women and children and the devilish policy which butchered them to terrify their husbands and fathers into submission. I saw Pym and his officers on their return from this voyage, and not one of them but would have given a month's pay to have gone on another similar trip. Their Government, in passing judgment on the act, could not condemn it, but to two parties, unfortunately, it was a political movement—the Hellenes, who insisted on considering it an intervention in their favor, and so compelled the English Government to forbid its repetition; and the French, who regarded it as a manoeuvre to block the game of the Viceroy. The French agent who afterwards succeeded DerchÉ assured me that they had the most conclusive evidence that Captain Pym had orders from London to give the insurrection a jog, because the annexation to Egypt would have been the result of the failure of the insurrection at this juncture, and that, although Pym was immediately recalled and, to all intents and purposes, disgraced, and I believe retired on account of his venture, he was only so in appearance, and really had been rewarded for his apparent punishment.

There were, at this time, two Italian corvettes, an Austrian frigate and gunboat, and a French gunboat, besides the Russian frigate, all of which, except the Frenchman, had, or were reported to have, orders to follow the lead of any other Power in rendering assistance to the non-combatants, and most of the commanders were anxious to follow Pym, but their delay in learning of his venture, and the quick disapproval of it, deterred all from intervention, and while correspondence was going on the war seemed suspended. It appeared finally to be decided that no one should imitate the English commander. The insurrection seemed on the point of collapsing, through the severity of the winter and the discouragement of the Cretans. Volunteers had been coming over from Greece—a motley mass of all nations—many of them from Smyrna and other Turkish parts, who, as soon as they landed, began to breed disaffection and maltreat the Cretans, creating the most angry feeling in the island, which did not stop short of violence. At this time, the whole body were driven into the Sphakian mountains, where, exposed to intense cold, half-fed, and without any discipline, they were dangerous only to the insurrection, and yielded readily to proffers of the Pasha to give them free exit and conveyance to Greece. A portion of them accepted the proposition on condition that they should be sent on European ships, and the Vice-Commissioner called a council of those consuls whose governments had naval representatives in Cretan waters, to propose that their ships should go to receive the disaffected volunteers, but with the condition that no non-combatants or Cretans should be accepted. None of the commanders were willing to accept the mission on these terms, except the French, and the gunboat which he commanded went, therefore, to Loutro, a port of Sphakia (the Port Phoenix of St. Paul), and embarked four hundred and eighty men, who were landed at PeirÆus, where they were received with violence and insults by the excited populace, and some barely escaped paying the last penalty for their defection.