blow in the
raging August sun; and the Turks at last retired with a loss of six
hundred dead.

Nothing daunted, the 7th of August saw them once more scaling the
walls and rushing the breaches of the two bastions, this time with
nearly twenty thousand men. They poured over the ravelin, swarmed up
the breach, and were on the point of carrying the fort. All was nearly
lost, and at that supreme moment even the aged Grand Master, whose
place was to direct, not to imperil his life, came down to the front
of battle, and used his sword and pike like a common soldier. Eight
long hours they fought, six times came fresh reserves to the support
of the Turks; the Christians were exhausted, and had no reserves. One
rush more and the place would be carried.

Just then a body of cavalry was seen riding down from the direction of
the Old Town. The Turks took them to be the long-expected
reinforcements from Sicily. They are seen to fall upon stray parties
of Turks; they must be the advance guard of Philip's army. Pi[=a]li in
alarm runs to his galleys; the Turks who had all but carried the
long-contested bastion pause in affright lest they be taken in rear.
In vain Mustafa, in vain the King of Algiers shows them that the
horsemen are but two hundred of the Old Town garrison, with no army at
all behind them. Panic, unreasoning and fatal as ever, seizes upon the
troops: the foothold won after eight hours of furious fighting is
surrendered to a scare; not a Turk stays to finish the victory. The
lives of their two thousand dead need not have been sacrificed.

Still Mustafa did not despair. He knew that the main defences of the
bastions had been destroyed--a few days more, a heavy cannonade, the
explosion of a series of mines which thousands of his sappers were
preparing would, he was certain, ensure the success of a final
assault. The day came, August 20th, and Mustafa himself, in his coat
of inlaid mail and robe of cramoisy, led his army forward; but a
well-directed fire drove him into a trench, whence he emerged not
till night covered his path. When at last he got back, he found his
army in camp; another assault had been repulsed. The next day they
went up again to the fatal embrasures, and this time the failure was
even more signal; repeated repulses were telling on the spirits of the
men, and the veteran Janissaries went to their work with unaccustomed
reluctance. Nevertheless, the trenches, cut in the hard rock,
continued to advance