THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE 1821 TO 1833 BY W.ALISON PHILLIPS 1897

94 THE WAR OF GREEK INDEPENDENCE
price of safety. 1
Of the rest of the inhabitants, some
27,000 are said to have been put to the sword, while
43,000 were collected and sold into slavery;
and of
a once flourishing community of a hundred thousand
souls, barely two thousand remained to people the
island.
The unhappy Chiots were not long unavenged.
On the 10th of April the Greek fleet put to sea under
Admiral Miaoulis;
and on the 31st, a naval engagement
was fought off Chios, but without result. The
Greeks then determined to have resort to their favourite
device of fire-ships. On the 18th of June, the principal
officers of the Turkish fleet assembled on board
the flagship, to celebrate the feast of Bairam with the
Capitan Pasha. The night was pitch dark; but the
admiral's vessel, decorated from masthead to waterline
with coloured lanterns, was a blaze of light.
On
board, some three thousand men were celebrating the
great Mohammedan festival with laughter and music;
and, in the universal jollity, but a poor watch was kept.
Suddenly, through the lines of the Turkish vessels,
glided, like dark shadows, two Greek fire-ships. One
of these, steered with admirable precision by Kanaris,
iCf. Gordon, i. 362. The Philhellene Jourdain himself
saw, on the island of Psara, many victims of this '
atrocious
speculation.* Mtmoires historiques, dc. i. 68.