slowly, and the cavalier behind the ravelin was
taken after a severe struggle:--just taken, when La Valette's mines
blew the victorious assailants into the air. On the 30th another
well-planned assault was repelled. One more effort--a last and
desperate attempt--was to be made on the 7th of September; but on the
5th the news arrived that the Spanish army of relief had at length,
after inconceivable delays and hesitations, actually landed on the
island. The worn-out Turks did not wait to reconnoitre, they had borne
enough: a retreat was ordered, the siege was abandoned, the works that
had cost so much labour and blood were deserted, and there was a
general stampede to the galleys. It is true they landed again when
they learnt that the relieving army numbered but six thousand men; but
their strength was departed from them. They tried to fight the
relieving army, and then again they ran for the ships. The Spaniards
cut them down like sheep, and of all that gallant armament scarce five
thousand lived to tell the tale of those terrible three months in
Malta.

No more moving sight can be imagined than the meeting of the new-come
Brethren of the Order and their comrades of St. Michael's Fort. The
worn remnant of the garrison, all told, was scarcely six hundred
strong, and hardly a man was without a wound. The Grand Master and his
few surviving Knights looked like phantoms from another world, so pale
and grisly were they, faint from their wounds, their hair and beard
unkempt, their armour stained, and neglected, as men must look who had
hardly slept without their weapons for more than three memorable
months. As they saw these gaunt heroes the rescuers burst into tears;
strangers clasped hands and wept together with the same overpowering
emotion that mastered relievers and relieved when Havelock and Colin
Campbell led the Highlanders into Lucknow. Never surely had men
deserved more nobly the homage of mankind. In all history there is no
record of such a siege, of such a disproportion in the forces, of such
a glorious outcome. The Knights of Malta live for ever among the
heroes of all time.

FOOTNOTES:

[44] See an excellent account of the galleys and discipline of the
Knights of St. John in Jurien de la Graviere, _les Derniers Jours de la
Marine a Rames_, ch. ix.; and _Les Chevaliers de Malte_, tome i.

[45] Jurien de la Graviere, _Les Chevaliers de Malte et la Marine de
Philippe II._, ii. 71.

XIV.

LEPANTO.