Page:Tupper family records - 1835.djvu/54

 34 MEMOIR OF LIEUT. TUPPER.

tain Pechell set sail immediately in pursuit of these lawless and desperate men. On Saturday the 17th of June, 1826,* being near Gozo, the boats were dispatched to destroy some small vessels hauled up on the beach, but, as a heavy surf was breaking there, the crews could not land, and they coasted along, followed by the frigate and by a large party of armed Greeks, who anxiously watched their motions from the shore, offering them, however, no molestation, although within musket shot. In the evening the boats were recalled, having been unable to effect a landing. The ship stood off and on the coast of Candia during the night, and early the following morning two misticoes were observed under sail standing towards her. On perceiving their mistake they immediately made for the land, and, while in chase of them, a rocky islet was unexpectedly disco- vered under Cape Matala, on which were seen armed men, the crews of three or four piratical misticoes, which were secured to the rocks in a narrow creek, called, by the English, Good Harbour, formed by the islet and the main land of Candia. This island, the Crete of the ancients, and the theatre of so much contention and bloodshed in modern times, was in possession of the Turks, some of whom were seen from the Sybille, and were equally dreaded by the Greeks, whose retreat to the main, had they been so inclined, was thus effectually cut off Candia rises pre-eminently above the multitude of isles which overspread the Egean, and the snowy tops of Mount Ida are seen distinctly at sea from a distance of thirty

in the Greek Archipelago, and fifty-one years after the attack of Bunker's Hill, in which Lieutenant Tupper's great uncle, Major, afterwards Major* General, Tupper, commanded a battalion of marines.
 * Exactly thirty-two years after the Sybille was captured from the French

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