Page:A History of the Knights of Malta, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.djvu/504

470 their rescue. On the 25th of August a fleet of twenty-eight galleys, containing 8,500 troops, of whom nearly 300 were members of the Order, the remainder being Italian and Spanish soldiery, set sail from Syracuse and appeared off Malta. Whilst the viceroy was reconnoitring the island with a view to deciding upon the most prudent measures to adopt for the relief of the fortress, one of those sudden and violent storms so frequent in the Mediterranean arose and dispersed his fleet, compelling him to return to Sicily to refit. His troops were so eager to be led to the rescue that the repairs were speedily completed, and on the 6th of September he again set sail, and anchored that same night between the islands of Comino and Gozo. The next morning he landed his army in Melleha Bay, a small but commodious inlet on the north of the island; and having witnessed the commencement of its march towards the Città Notabile, he returned to Sicily for a further body of 4,000 men who were still at Syracuse awaiting transport.

Meanwhile Mustapha had remained in his camp, after his last failure, in a state of the most abject despondency. Every effort which his ingenuity could devise had been made to overcome the obstinate resistance of the knights; their works had been battered by a train far more powerful than had ever been previously used at a siege; they had been subjected to a series of the most desperate and prolonged assaults; and in spite of the difficulties of the ground mining had been resorted to. All, however, was useless. A cavalier had been raised in front of the post of Castile, from the summit of which the interior of that bastion could be overlooked, but it had been captured by the defenders, and actually converted by them into an outpost. At the last assault a cask had been thrown into the town filled with combustibles with an ignited slow match attached to it, but the knights had succeeded in hurling it back into the midst of a column which was at that very moment advancing to the attack; the cask exploded, and the column was shattered and dispersed by a missile devised by themselves. An attempt had been made against the Città Notabile, but had been baffled by the determination of the commandant. Nothing seemed to succeed, and Mustapha felt that he had been thwarted at every point. It was at this moment, whilst he was plunged in the