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-wolves were
concerned, was that they still remained the most competent seamen and
sea-fighters in the Mediterranean, and that the legend of the invincibility
of the Ottomans at sea rested on what had been accomplished during a long
period of years by these insatiable pirates and magnificent warriors.
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