Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/498

464 covered the true state of the case. The cavalry of the Città Notabile, having attained their object and created a diversion, wisely retired in time, and. Mustapha found, to his unspeakable indignation, that he had abandoned a victory already in his grasp on a false alarm.

From this time he resolved to carry his point rather by the harassing frequency of his attacks than by their intensity. Each day, therefore, witnessed a repetition of the struggle at one or both points of attack. It would weary the reader to enter into a detail of all the incidents by which these constant assaults were marked. Their general character was always the same. At the appointed signal the besiegers would rush forward with shouts and yells, and would make a dash at the gaping breach, the shrill notes of the atabal ringing forth with inspiriting tones. But there they would be met by an enemy who cared little either for the notes of the atabal or the shouts of the Moslem. Then would ensue that hand-to-hand encounter, in which the chivalry of St. John, standing on the summit of the breach, invariably proved superior to the assailants struggling up the rugged pathway. Less and less obstinately would the combat be maintained, until the signal of retreat, rising above the din of battle, announced one more failure to the Turk, and one more triumph to the Christian.

After each of these victories, however, La Valette beheld his numbers steadily diminishing. His thoughts, therefore, turned more and more anxiously towards the relief expected from Sicily, where his ambassador had not been idle. That envoy’s task was, indeed, no easy one, and it required the most skilful diplomacy to carry his instructions judiciously into effect. Whiist, on the one hand, it was urgently necessary that he should stimulate the dilatory viceroy to increased exertion, it was, on the other hand, equally incumbent on him to say or do nothing which could by any possibility be construed into a cause of offence. When the news had reached Sicily, first of the fall of St. Elmo, then of the blockade of the Bourg, and lastly of the repeated assaults that were being made at that point and at Senglea, he could no longer refrain from indignant and vehement remonstrances at a delay which seemed certain to entail the loss of the island.