ainst thirty-five thousand
Turks, during the great siege of 1565; and the stately English
iron-clads, which seemed to be always exercising their men, or standing
out to sea to bang at a floating mark with their big guns for hours
together.

But there were other and even more striking sights than these. There was
the old city of Citta Vecchia, with its ruined aqueduct. There was the
Church of St. Paul (the first built on the island), the ceiling of which
is covered with magnificent frescoes, while the floor is one mass of
precious stones, worked into portraits of the great men who lay beneath
it. There was a cave, said to have sheltered St. Paul after his
shipwreck, and containing a fine statue of him. There was the garden of
St. Antonio, which, in the glory of the dazzling Southern sunshine,
seemed the most beautiful of all. There was the armory of the Knights of
St. John, where Frank saw numbers of huge bows, battle-axes, and
two-handed swords; quaint old cannon, made of copper tubes covered with
coils of rope, which usually burst at the fifth shot; and last, but
certainly not least, an enormous helmet, as heavy and almost as big as
a wash-tub, said to have been worn by a gigantic knight of the order,
who, after defending the gate of Fort St. Elmo single-handed against a
whole battalion of Turkish Janizaries, had at length to be blown bodily
away with cannon-balls.

[Illustration]

Austin did not forget to visit the Catacombs, which fully bore out
Herrick's description of them. Far and wide the earth was honey-combed
with these gloomy galleries, in which, hundreds of years before, the
Christians of Malta had found refuge, while everything above-ground was
being wasted with fire and sword by the destroying rage of the Saracens.
Crumbling stone crosses, rudely carved names, antique burial-places,
seamed the gloomy walls in every direction, while the skulls and bones
of men, women, and children lay under foot like shells upon the
sea-shore. In the fitful glare of his torch, the long dark robe and
white corpse-like face of the monk who acted as guide might well have
passed for one of the dead about whom he told so many ghastly stories;
and Frank was not sorry to find himself in the bright sunshine once
more. But on looking round him, he saw with amazement that he was now
right on the opposite side of the mountain, several miles from the spot
where he had entered it. And then his monkish guide, by way of a
satisfactory