ent connected with the battle of Lepanto which must
be told. In the _Marquesa_ galley, in the division of Doria, was lying in
his bed sick of a fever a young man twenty-four years of age; a Spaniard of
Alcala de Henares, "de padres hidalgos y honrados," we are told, although
these parents were poor. When this young man heard that a battle was
imminent he rose from his bed and demanded of his captain, Francisco San
Pedro, that he should be placed in the post of the greatest danger. The
captain, and others, his friends, counselled him to remain in his bed.
"Senores," replied the young man, "what would be said of Miguel de
Cervantes should he take this advice? On every occasion up to this day on
which his enemies have offered battle to his Majesty I have served like a
good soldier; and today I intend to do so in spite of this sickness and
fever." He was given command of twelve soldiers in a shallop, and all day
was to be seen where the combat raged most fiercely. He received two wounds
in the chest and another which cost him the loss of his left hand. To those
to whom he proudly displayed them in after-years he was accustomed to say,
"wounds in the face or the chest are like stars which guide one through
honour to the skies." Of him the chronicler says: "He continued the rest of
his life with honourable memory of this wonderful occurrence, and, although
he lost the use of his left hand, it added to the glory of his right." How
glorious was that right hand is known to all readers of _El Ingenioso
Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha._

The losses at the battle of Lepanto are something so prodigious that
imagination boggles at them. It is said that the Christians lost five
thousand men and the Turks no less than thirty thousand. Enormous as these
numbers are, they represent probably a very conservative estimate of the
loss. The Turks lost two hundred vessels, and when we recollect the number
of men embarked on board of the sixteenth-century galleys we can see that
the numbers are by no means exaggerated, especially as no quarter was given
on either side. When the Captain Ojeda recaptured the battered wreck which
had been the _Capitana_ of Malta, we are told that on board of her were
three hundred dead Turks; if this were the cost of the capture of one
galley we need not be surprised at the total.

With the results to Europe of this amazing battle we have nothing to do in
this book. That which it demonstrated, as far as the Sea-wo