The corsair recognised that he could do no more: sullenly he cast off the tow, and, forming up some thirty of his galleys, still in a condition to navigate, stood boldly through the centre of where the battle had once raged, and escaped. The _Capitana_ of Malta had been taken; and to the Sultan did Occhiali present the great standard of Saint John, as an earnest of his achievement.
Bernardino de Escalente, in his work _Diálogos del arte militar_, printed in Seville in 1583, says that the Captain Ojeda, of the galley _Guzmana_, recaptured the _Capitana_ of Malta; and that, in recognition thereof, “the Religion” pensioned him for life. Ojeda, it is to be presumed, was under the orders of the Marquis of Santa Cruz during the battle.
There remains one incident connected with the battle of Lepanto which must be told. In the _Marquesa_ galley, in the division of Doria, was lying in his bed sick of a fever a young man twenty-four years of age; a Spaniard of Alcala de Henares, “de padres hidalgos y honrados,” we are told, although these parents were poor. When this young man heard that a battle was imminent he rose from his bed and demanded of his captain, Francisco San Pedro, that he should be placed in the post of the greatest danger. The captain, and others, his friends, counselled him to remain in his bed. “Señores,” replied the young man, “what would be said of Miguel de Cervantes should he take this advice? On every occasion up to this day on which his enemies have offered battle to his Majesty I have served like a good soldier; and today I intend to do so in spite of this sickness and fever.” He was given command of twelve soldiers in a shallop, and all day was to be seen where the combat raged most fiercely. He received two wounds in the chest and another which cost him the loss of his left hand. 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_.