"Were there any cats--" began Starr; but the lecturer proceeded without noticing the interruption.
"These forces were reinforced, if I remember rightly"--(Cries of "Oh, you do! you _do_!" from the audience)--"were afterwards increased by a lot of corsairs from Algiers and pirates from Tripoli. When the fort seemed on the point of breaking up, after four months' battering, the few Knights that were left entered that little chapel over there, received the rites of the Church--the _viaticum_--and went out to start on their last journey. They were cut to pieces by the Turks; but two outworks still resisted and fought off the besiegers until help arrived from Sicily. Out of eight or nine thousand defenders, only six hundred were left to join in the _Te Deum_ (you know the Knights were a religious order) as the Turks sailed off."
"O my, look at this!" Starr suddenly broke in. "Isn't she a dear!"
The officers looked up and saw an extremely pretty girl approaching, attended by a maid.
"What on earth is that thing on her head?" queried Dobson under his breath. "It looks like a stu'n'sail!"
"It's a _faldetta_," said Liddon. "Most of the ladies, the natives, I mean, wear them."
The young men rose from their seats on the bastion, and raised their hats as the girl passed. She flushed and bowed, then looked down demurely, and hurried on.
"What language do they speak?" demanded Bob, hastily. "If I only knew, I could ask her about Maltese----"
"Don't get agitated, my son," said Liddon, calmly, "and don't address any young ladies without an introduction. As for their language, it's a mixture of Portuguese and Arabic----"
"That'll do," groaned Bob, with a heavy sigh. "There's no danger of my breaking out in her native tongue. What's next on the programme?"
"Well, we'll take a stroll through the principal street and visit the Church of St. John, which was built by the Knights a few years after the siege."
The street itself was full of interest to the young Americans. Sauntering along--themselves attracting no little favourable attention in their natty white uniforms--they met cabmen driving their little horses at full speed, English ladies elegantly dressed side by side with the natives in their huge black one-sided hoods, flocks of goats, to be milked at the doors of customers, smart British officers, swarthy-faced Hindoos, and beggars without end.