Don
Juan's vessel, came through the smoke-cloud and struck the Spanish ship
stem to stem with a grinding crash and a splintering of timber, throwing
down many of the crew. The Turkish bow dug deep into the Spanish ship, and
in the confusion of the collision it was thought for a moment she was
sinking, but a forward bulkhead kept her afloat. Ali's ship rebounded from
the shock, then glided alongside the "Reale" with much mutual smashing of
oars. The two ships grappled, and the hand-to-hand fight began. At the same
time Pertev Pasha grappled Veniero's flagship, and another Turkish galley,
commanded by Ali's two sons, forced its way through the line and engaged
the two galleys that lay astern of the flagship. Then the Pasha of Mitylene
closed upon Colonna's ship, and all along the centre the galleys came
dashing together. The crash of broken oars, the rattling explosions of
arquebuses and grenades, the war-notes of the Christian trumpets and the
Turkish drums, the clash of swords, the shouts and yells of the combatants,
rose in a deafening din. Froissart wrote in an earlier day that sea-fights
were always murderous. This last great battle of the medieval navies had
the character of its predecessors. In this fight at close quarters on the
narrow space afforded by the galleys' decks there was no question of
surrender on either side, no thought but of which could strike the hardest
and kill the most. Nor could men, striving hand to hand in the confusion of
the floating melee, know anything of what was being done beyond their
limited range of view, so that even the admirals became for the moment only
leaders of small groups of fighting-men. On the poop and forecastle of the
"Reale" were gathered men whose names recalled all that was greatest in the
annals of Spanish chivalry, veterans who had fought the Moor and voyaged
the western ocean, and young cavaliers eager to show themselves worthy sons
of the lines of Guzman and Mendoza, Benavides and Salazar. Don Juan,
arrayed in complete steel, stood by the flagstaff of the consecrated
standard. Along the bulwarks four hundred Castilian arquebusiers in
corselet and head-piece represented the pick of the yet unconquered Spanish
infantry. The three hundred rowers had left the oars, and, armed with pike
and sword, were ready to second them, when the musketry ceased and the
storming of the Turkish galleys began. From Ali's ship a hundred archers
and three hundred musketeers of the Janissar