Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/483

Rh fallen. A few of the Maltese soldiery, then, as now, expert in the art of swimming and diving, succeeded in making good their escape to St. Angelo amid a storm of missiles. Another body of nine men (whether members of the Order or soldiers is not quite clear) were saved from death by falling into the hands of Dragut’s corsairs. These pirates, realizing the fact that a live Christian was a more valuable article of merchandise than a dead one, and actuated rather by a love of gain than by such fanaticism as stimulated the other Turks, preserved the nine men they had captured for the purpose of utilizing them as galley slaves. The tattered White Cross banner was torn ignominiously from its staff, and on the 3rd of June, the eve of the festival of St. John, the standard of the Moslem was reared in its place.

The natural ferocity of Mustapha’s character had been aroused to the utmost by the desperate resistance he had encountered. Even the senseless and bleeding corpses of the enemy were not sacred from his revengeful malice, he directed that the bodies of the knights should be selected from amongst the other slain, and that their heads should be struck off and erected on poles looking towards St. Angelo. The trunks were then fastened on planks extended in the form of a cross, the same emblem being deeply gashed upon their breasts. Thus mutilated, they were cast into the harbour, on the surface of which they floated. The action of the wind carried them across to St. Angelo, and its garrison was aroused to a frenzy of indignation by the sad spectacle. By La Valette’s direction the poor disfigured remains were reverently raised from their watery bed, and as it was impossible in their then condition to identify them, they were all solemnly buried together in the conventual church of the Bourg. The revenge taken by La Valette was unworthy of his character as a Christian soldier, since he caused all his Turkish prisoners to be decapitated, and their heads to be fired from the guns of St. Angelo. Repulsive as this act seems to modern thought and feeling, it was too much in accordance with the spirit of the age to have been regarded with the slightest disapprobation by the chroniclers of the time.

The intelligence of the capture of St. Elmo was promptly conveyed to the wounded Dragut, who lay at the point