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seamen whose skill and daring were the admiration of the Mediterranean
were not easily baffled. Finding himself foiled in his first attempt, he
slackened his course, and, threatening sometimes one vessel and
sometimes another, drew the Genoese eastward, until the inferior speed
of some of the galleys had caused an opening at the northern end of the
Christian line. Upon this opening the crafty corsair immediately bore
down with all the speed of his oars, and passed through it with most of
his galleys. This evolution placed him in the rear of the whole
Christian line of battle. On the extreme right of the centre division
sailed Prior Giustiniani, the commodore of the small Maltese squadron.
This officer had hitherto fought with no less success than skill, and
had already captured four Turkish galleys. The Viceroy of Algiers had,
the year before, captured three galleys of Malta, and was fond of
boasting of being the peculiar scourge and terror of the Order of St.
John. The well-known white cross banner, rising over the smoke of
battle, soon attracted his eye and was marked for his prey. Wheeling
round like a hawk, he bore down from behind upon the unhappy prior. The
three war-worn vessels of St. John were no match for seven stout
Algerines which had not yet fired a shot. The knights and their men
defended themselves with a valor worthy of their heroic order. A youth
named Bernardino de Heredia, son of the Count of Fuentes, signally
distinguished himself; and a Saragossan knight, Geronimo Ramirez,
although riddled with arrows like another St. Sebastian, fought with
such desperation that none of the Algerine boarders cared to approach
him until they saw that he was dead. A knight of Burgundy leaped alone
into one of the enemy's galleys, killed four Turks, and defended himself
until overpowered by numbers. On board the prior's vessel, when he was
taken, he himself, pierced with five arrow wounds, was the sole
survivor, except two knights, a Spaniard and a Sicilian, who, being
senseless from their wounds, were considered as dead. Having secured the
banner of St. John, Aluch Ali took the prior's ship in tow, and was
making the best of his way out of a battle which his skilful eye soon
discovered to be irretrievably lost. He had not, however, sailed far
when he was in turn descried by the Marquess of Santa Cruz, who, with
his squadron of reserve, was moving about redressing the wrongs of
Christian fortune. Aluch Ali had no mind