Algerine, and abundantly refuted by the vigor and success with which
he at last attacked the enemy. It is not improbable that the true
explanation of his conduct is that offered by the captain of a
Neapolitan galley, present at the battle, that he wished to gain an
advantage over Aluch Ali by seamanship, and that the renegade, no less
skilled in the game, played it on this occasion better than he.

Although in numbers, both of men and vessels, the Sultan's fleet was
superior to the fleet of the League, this superiority was more than
counterbalanced by other important advantages possessed by the
Christians. The artillery of the West was of greater power and far
better served than the ordnance of the East; and its fire was rendered
doubly disastrous by the thronged condition of the Turkish vessels. The
lofty-peaked prows of these vessels seriously interfered, as we have
already seen, with the working of their guns. A great number of their
combatants were armed with the bow instead of the firelock, which placed
them at an obvious disadvantage, except during heavy rains, which
extinguished the match of the latter weapon. Of the Turks who carried
the musket or arquebus few could handle them with the expertness of a
Christian soldier. The advantages which the League derived from its
galeases were heightened by the fact that a large proportion of its
other vessels were superior to their antagonists. The galleys of the
King of Spain were, in general, both more strongly built and more
carefully protected against boarders than those of the Sultan. Even
early in the battle the Moslems began to discover that they were
overmatched. In many of the galleys the guns were at once silenced by
the heavier artillery of the Christians, in whose hands the fire of the
arquebus and the musket, when they came to close quarters, proved so
withering that the enemy's deck was sometimes swept clean before they
boarded, and the turbaned heads of the janizaries were seen crouching
beneath the benches of the slaves. When the conflict was transferred to
the Turkish decks, the Christians, however, found themselves fiercely
met, and among other means of opposing their progress they perceived
that the central gangway (_corsia_) had been torn up, or they slipped
upon planking which had been smeared with butter, oil, or even, it is
said, with honey, to render the footing insecure. So efficient were the
nettings and other precautions with which Don John of A