vre of the corsair was successful; having drawn off some
fifteen of the Christian galleys, he suddenly flung the whole of his
greatly superior force into the gap and surrounded them. These galleys were
Spanish, Venetian, and Maltese, and, although they offered a most vigorous
resistance, they were mostly destroyed or captured. Doria, in spite of all
his efforts, was on this day both outgeneralled and outfought: the
Sea-wolves, under their grim leader, manoeuvring for position, obtaining
it, and then falling like a thunderbolt on the foe. They were all brave men
at Lepanto on this memorable October day; but few there were like the
corsair king, in whom a heart of fire was kept in check by a brain of ice,
who, during the whole combat, never gave away a chance, or failed to swoop
like an eagle from his eyry when the blunders of his enemy gave him the
opportunity for which he watched. It was the old story of "the veritable
man of the sea" pitted against gallant soldiers fighting on an unfamiliar
element. And yet it was against the best seaman on the Christian side that
Occhiali pitted himself on this stricken field; and none can deny that with
him rested such honour as was gained by the Turks on this day, the day
which broke up for ever the idea of the invincibility of the Ottomans on
the water. It needs not to say, to those who have read the story of the
siege of Malta, how the Knights comported themselves in the battle; and yet
Occhiali captured the _Capitana_, or principal galley of the Order, He was
towing her out of action, a prize, when the Marquis of Santa Cruz bore down
upon him with the reserve. By this time the battle was lost; the Moslems
were in full retreat.

The corsair recognised that he could do no more: sullenly he cast off the
tow, and, forming up some thirty of his galleys, still in a condition to
navigate, stood boldly through the centre of where the battle had once
raged, and escaped. The _Capitana_ of Malta had been taken; and to the
Sultan did Occhiali present the great standard of Saint John, as an earnest
of his achievement.

Bernardino de Escalente, in his work _Dialogos del arte militar_, printed
in Seville in 1583, says that the Captain Ojeda, of the galley _Guzmana_,
recaptured the _Capitana_ of Malta; and that, in recognition thereof, "the
Religion" pensioned him for life. Ojeda, it is to be presumed, was under
the orders of the Marquis of Santa Cruz during the battle.

There remains one incid