ing these rovers of the sea, to whom
compassion for suffering was absolutely unknown.

The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or the Knights of Malta as they were
also called, used the galley in their unceasing warfare with the Moslem.
The General of the Galleys was a Grand Cross of the Order; the captains
were knights, and the second officer, or first lieutenant, was known as the
Patron. The crew of a galley of the knights had twenty-six rowing benches
and carried two hundred and eighty rowers and two hundred and eighty
combatants; the armament consisted of one bow cannon which discharged a
forty-eight pound ball, four other small guns, eight pounders, and fourteen
others which discharged stones.

"The Religion," as the Knights were in the habit of describing themselves,
had certain definite stations assigned to each knight, seaman, or officer
during action. It is to be imagined, however, that these were merely for
the preliminary stages of the fight, as it was seldom that time allowed for
more than one discharge, or at the most two, of the artillery, before the
opposing galleys met in a hand-to-hand conflict which must have immediately
become an indiscriminate melee.

The manner in which the galley should engage is thus contained in an answer
to a question of Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto. He wrote to
Garcia de Toledo, fourth Marquis of Villafranca, and General of the Galleys
of Sicily, to ask his opinion as to what distance it was most efficacious
to open fire in a naval action. Toledo replied that "one cannot fire more
than twice before the galleys close. I should therefore recommend that the
arquebussiers should hold their fire until they are so close to the enemy
that his blood will leap into the face of him who discharges his piece.
have always heard it said, and this by captains who are well skilled in the
art of war, that the last discharge of the cannon should be coincident with
the noise made by the breaking of the spurs carried in the prows of the
galleys; in fact that the two noises should be as one; some propose to fire
before the enemy does: this is by no means my advice."

Artillery, it will be seen from this, played a comparatively unimportant
part in the combats between galley and galley; that in these craft men
still relied on the strength of their right arm and the edge of their
swords; there was still a certain contempt for villainous saltpetre, which
was looked upon as a somewhat cowa