galleys and many smaller craft, carrying one hundred and twenty thousand
men, slowly advanced "in battle's magnificently stern array." The brave
Ali Pacha led the van.

As the hostile fleets met, the two admirals exchanged shots. At noon,
the Christians, among whom was one of the greatest soldiers and one of
the ablest authors of that age--Farnese and Cervantes--knelt to receive
absolution from their chaplains, and then rose up to fight. In many a
quiet village away in the Appenines, or in the Sierras of more distant
Spain, the Angelus was ringing, and many a heartfelt prayer was aiding
the Christian cause, then a wild cry arose from the Moslem fleet and
"from mouth to mouth" of the cannon the "volley'd thunder flew." The
combat deepened and became hand to hand. The two admirals ships grappled
together in a deadly struggle. Don John, foremost in the fray, was
slightly wounded. At a third attempt, Ali Pacha's galley was boarded,
captured, himself slain, and the Standard of the Cross replaced the
Crescent. Victory! Victory! was the cry from one Christian ship to
another. In less than four hours, the Turkish ships were scattered,
sunk, or burning, until darkness and storm drove Don John to seek
shelter in port, and hid the wreckage with which man had strewn the sea.
The Christian loss was eight thousand, the Turkish four or five times
greater. Don John hastened to console and comfort his wounded. Did he
not, perchance, visit, on his bed of suffering, the immortal Cervantes?
After the wounded, he turned to his prisoners, whom he treated with a
generosity to which the sixteenth century was little accustomed.

One there was, let us not forget it, who not bodily present, had a
lion's share in the victory. A second Moses, with uplifted hands, St.
Pius V., had prayed God and Our Lady, to aid Don John's arms. "The night
before the battle, and the day itself, aged as he was, and broken with
disease, the Saint had passed in the Vatican in fasting and prayer. All
through the Holy City the monasteries and the colleges were in prayer
too. As the evening advanced, the Pontifical treasurer asked an audience
of the Sovereign Pontiff on an important matter. Pius was in his
bedroom, and began to converse with him; when suddenly he stopped the
conversation, left him, threw open the window, and gazed up into heaven.
Then closing it again, he looked gravely at his official, and said,
"This is no time for business; go, return thanks to the Lo