riginal force had perished. To the bloody roll of those who
had fallen in the numerous assaults were now to be added the daily
victims of pestilence. In consequence of the great heat, exposure, and
bad food, a dysentery had broken out in the Moslem army, and was now
sweeping off its hundreds in a day. Both ammunition and provisions were
running low. Ships bringing supplies were constantly intercepted by the
Sicilian cruisers. Many of the heavy guns were so much damaged by the
fire of the besieged, as to require to be withdrawn and sent on board
the fleet,--an operation performed with a silence that contrasted
strongly with the noisy shouts with which the batteries had been
raised.[1369] But these movements could not be conducted so silently as
to escape the notice of the garrison, whose spirits were much revived by
the reports daily brought in by deserters of the condition of the enemy.

Mustapha chafed not a little under the long-protracted resistance of the
besieged. He looked with apprehension to the consequences of a failure
in an expedition for which preparations had been made on so magnificent
a scale by his master, and with so confident hopes of success. He did
not fail to employ every expedient for effecting his object that the
military science of that day--at least Turkish science--could devise. He
ordered movable wooden towers to be built, such as were used under the
ancient system of besieging fortified places, from which, when brought
near to the works, his musketeers might send their volleys into the
town. But the besieged, sallying forth, set fire to his towers, and
burnt them to the ground. He caused a huge engine to be made, of the
capacity of a hogshead; filled with combustibles, and then swung, by
means of machinery, on the rampart of the bastion. But the garrison
succeeded in throwing it back on the heads of the inventors, where it
exploded with terrible effect. Mustapha ran his mines under the
Christian defences, until the ground was perforated like a honeycomb,
and the garrison seemed to be treading on the crust of a volcano. La
Valette countermined in his turn. The Christians, breaking into the
galleries of the Turks, engaged them boldly underground; and sometimes
the mine, exploding, buried both Turk and Christian under a heap of
ruins.

Baffled on every point, with their ranks hourly thinned by disease, the
Moslem troops grew sullen and dispirited; and now that the bastion of
Castile, with its d