"Count me no longer among the living," said the Knight.
"You will be better employed in defending the rest of our brethren." He
then, unassisted, dragged himself to the foot of the altar in the chapel,
where his dead body was discovered when all was over.
So far communication remained established between St. Elmo and their
comrades in Il Borgo on the opposite side of the harbour; in consequence
the wounded were removed and their places taken by one hundred fresh men
under the Chevalier Vagnon. To the Bailli of Negropont and the Commandeur
Broglio, La Valette sent a message to return to Il Borgo. These gallant and
aged veterans, both of whom were wounded, whose faces were scorched by the
sun and blackened with powder, whose bodies were well-nigh worn out with
perpetual vigil and hand-to-hand fighting, refused stoutly to quit their
post, which now was naught but a dreadful shambles filled with corpses
mangled out of recognition and heads and limbs which had been torn and
hacked from their bodies.
Dragut now proposed to erect batteries on the same side of the Great Port
as that on which Il Borgo was situated; on the point now known as Ricasoli,
but which was then and for centuries afterwards known as the Punta Delle
Forche (or Point of the Gallows, because it was here that all pirates was
executed; and their bodies, swinging in chains, were the first objects that
met the eye on entering the Great Port).
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