communications
with Muley Hamid, the then King of Tunis, who was feudatory of Spain.
Anxious as was the corsair to aid in attacking his implacable enemies, the
Knights, he could not afford to leave his own flank unguarded in Africa. He
succeeded, however, in arriving at an understanding with the King of Tunis,
and, further than this, he had assured himself, by means of his spies, that
the succours which were to be sent from Sicily by the Spanish King could
not possibly arrive for another two months. It was the negotiations which
he was obliged to undertake with Muley Hamid which had caused his late
arrival. As far as it is possible to judge, it was this circumstance, which
(added to their own incomparable valour) turned the scale in favour of the
Knights.

Among all those brave men at Malta, on both sides, in this flaming month of
June 1565, there were none who excelled the Basha of Tripoli. "No one had
ever seen a more intrepid general officer," says de Vertot. "He passed
entire days in the trenches and at the batteries. Among his different
talents none understood better than did he the direction and conduct of
artillery, which was his special _metier_. By his orders on June 1st a
second battery was constructed closer to the fort and parallel to the one
already in existence, in order that an absolutely continuous fire might be
maintained. He mounted four guns on the opposite side of Marsa Muzetto
Harbour on a projecting point of land, from which a further enfilading fire
smote the doomed fortress on the flank: this point has been known ever
since as the Point Dragut."

A ravelin in advance of the fortress on the land side was scourged without
ceasing by the arquebus fire of the Janissaries. One evening, as the return
fire had slackened and all seemed quiet within this work, some Turkish
engineers stole forth from the trenches to reconnoitre. Approaching the
cavalier, all was still as death; the bold sappers pushed on as far as the
ditch by which the work was surrounded, creeping on hands and knees. They
let themselves down noiselessly into the ditch, and then, one standing on
the shoulders of another, peeped in upon their Christian foes. Whether or
no the sentry had been slain by a stray shot, or whether he too slept, can
never be known; but the cavalier was unguarded; all within it slept the
sleep of men utterly exhausted. The sappers crept back to their trenches,
fetched scaling-ladders, swept like a flood over the r