Her men were dead; her ship was forfeit.

It was only some ten days after the warship was left derelict with every living thing--that is, everything that had been living--with its neck broken, as Rooke informed me, when he brought the ship down the creek, and housed it in the dock behind the armoured gates--that we saw an item in _The Roma_ copied from _The Constantinople Journal_ of July 9: "LOSS OF AN OTTOMAN IRONCLAD WITH ALL HANDS.
"News has been received at Constantinople of the total loss, with all hands, of one of the newest and finest warships in the Turkish fleet--_The Mahmoud_, Captain Ali Ali--which foundered in a storm on the night of July 5, some distance off Cabrera, in the Balearic Isles.

There were no survivors, and no wreckage was discovered by the ships which went in relief--the _Pera_ and the _Mustapha_--or reported from anywhere along the shores of the islands, of which exhaustive search was made.

_The Mahmoud_ was double-manned, as she carried a full extra crew sent on an educational cruise on the most perfectly scientifically equipped warship on service in the Mediterranean waters." When the Voivode and I talked over the matter, he said: "After all, Turkey is a shrewd Power.

She certainly seems to know when she is beaten, and does not intend to make a bad thing seem worse in the eyes of the world." Well, 'tis a bad wind that blows good to nobody.