Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/293

Rh After three days’ seclusion Paleologus recovered his equanimity, and roused to a pitch of fury at the losses his army had sustained, he decided upon a still more vigorous prosecution of the siege. Returning once again to the southern side of the city, and abandoning in disgust all further attempts upon the tower of St. Nicholas, he commenced the construction of a battery on the edge of the counterscarp opposite the retrenchment in the Jews’ quarter. Here was an opportunity for the disgraced knights of Italy and Spain to recover their fair fame. By means of a postern they entered the ditch in the dead of night, and thence silently ascended the counterscarp with ladders and rushed impetuously into the as yet unfinished battery. The Turks, taken completely by surprise, offered little or no resistance; the struggle, which was rather a massacre than a fight, lasted only for a few minutes, and the victorious assailants remained masters of the battery. The gabions and other woodwork were set on fire, the battery completely destroyed, and the gallant little band returned triumphantly into the town, bearing upon their lances’ points the heads of their slain antagonists. This brilliant episode deservedly restored the actors in it to the good graces of D’Aubusson, who felt that from men capable of such dashing exploits he need have no further fear on the score of pusillanimity.

The pasha was taught by this incident that in conducting an attack against such vigorous and experienced foes as the defenders of Rhodes, he could not with impunity neglect any of the orthodox precautions of advance, tedious though they might be. Opening his approaches, therefore, on a more methodical and scientific system, he gradually regained the point from which he had been so rudely ejected. He drove galleries underground through the counterscarp, and from these he poured debris into the ditch, so as gradually to fill up the greater part of it, and, form a road across to the rampart.

The resources of D’Aubusson were taxed to the uttermost to devise means for resisting this new and most threatening method of approach. In the dilemma he bethought him of Maître Georges. Mysterious billets had more than once been shot into the town on arrows, warning the knights to beware of the German. Opinions were divided as to the object of these missives, some regarding them as dictated by irritation at the