第 49 页

"My sons, to assure you that I love you, no more need be known orsaid than that you are my sons; and to encourage a suspicion that I donot love you, no more is needed than the knowledge that I have noself-control as far as preservation of your patrimony is concerned;therefore, that you may for the future feel sure that I love youlike a father, and have no wish to ruin you like a stepfather, Ipropose to do with you what I have for some time back meditated, andafter mature deliberation decided upon. You are now of an age tochoose your line of life or at least make choice of a calling thatwill bring you honour and profit when you are older; and what I haveresolved to do is to divide my property into four parts; three Iwill give to you, to each his portion without making any difference,and the other I will retain to live upon and support myself forwhatever remainder of life Heaven may be pleased to grant me. But Iwish each of you on taking possession of the share that falls to himto follow one of the paths I shall indicate. In this Spain of oursthere is a proverb, to my mind very true- as they all are, being shortaphorisms drawn from long practical experience- and the one I refer tosays, 'The church, or the sea, or the king's house;' as much as tosay, in plainer language, whoever wants to flourish and become rich,let him follow the church, or go to sea, adopting commerce as hiscalling, or go into the king's service in his household, for they say,'Better a king's crumb than a lord's favour.' I say so because it ismy will and pleasure that one of you should follow letters, anothertrade, and the third serve the king in the wars, for it is a difficultmatter to gain admission to his service in his household, and if wardoes not bring much wealth it confers great distinction and fame.Eight days hence I will give you your full shares in money, withoutdefrauding you of a farthing, as you will see in the end. Now tellme if you are willing to follow out my idea and advice as I havelaid it before you."

Having called upon me as the eldest to answer, I, after urging himnot to strip himself of his property but to spend it all as hepleased, for we were young men able to gain our living, consented tocomply with his wishes, and said that mine were to follow theprofession of arms and thereby serve God and my king. My secondbrother having made the same proposal, decided upon going to theIndies, embarking the portion that fell to him in trade. The youngest,and in my opinion the wisest, said he would rather follow thechurch, or go to complete his studies at Salamanca. As soon as wehad come to an understanding, and made choice of our professions, myfather embraced us all, and in the short time he mentioned carriedinto effect all he had promised; and when he had given to each hisshare, which as well as I remember was three thousand ducats apiece incash (for an uncle of ours bought the estate and paid for it down, notto let it go out of the family), we all three on the same day tookleave of our good father; and at the same time, as it seemed to meinhuman to leave my father with such scanty means in his old age, Iinduced him to take two of my three thousand ducats, as theremainder would be enough to provide me with all a soldier needed.My two brothers, moved by my example, gave him each a thousand ducats,so that there was left for my father four thousand ducats in money,besides three thousand, the value of the portion that fell to himwhich he preferred to retain in land instead of selling it. Finally,as I said, we took leave of him, and of our uncle whom I havementioned, not without sorrow and tears on both sides, they chargingus to let them know whenever an opportunity offered how we fared,whether well or ill. We promised to do so, and when he had embraced usand given us his blessing, one set out for Salamanca, the other forSeville, and I for Alicante, where I had heard there was a Genoesevessel taking in a cargo of wool for Genoa.

It is now some twenty-two years since I left my father's house,and all that time, though I have written several letters, I have hadno news whatever of him or of my brothers; my own adventures duringthat period I will now relate briefly. I embarked at Alicante, reachedGenoa after a prosperous voyage, and proceeded thence to Milan,where I provided myself with arms and a few soldier's accoutrements;thence it was my intention to go and take service in Piedmont, butas I was already on the road to Alessandria della Paglia, I learnedthat the great Duke of Alva was on his way to Flanders. I changed myplans, joined him, served under him in the campaigns he made, waspresent at the deaths of the Counts Egmont and Horn, and waspromoted to be ensign under a famous captain of Guadalajara, Diegode Urbina by name. Some time after my arrival in Flanders news came ofthe league that his Holiness Pope Pius V of happy memory, had madewith Venice and Spain against the common enemy, the Turk, who had justthen with his fleet taken the famous island of Cyprus, whichbelonged to the Venetians, a loss deplorable and disastrous. It wasknown as a fact that the Most Serene Don John of Austria, naturalbrother of our good king Don Philip, was coming ascommander-in-chief of the allied forces, and rumours were abroad ofthe vast warlike preparations which were being made, all which stirredmy heart and filled me with a longing to take part in the campaignwhich was expected; and though I had reason to believe, and almostcertain promises, that on the first opportunity that presenteditself I should be promoted to be captain, I preferred to leave alland betake myself, as I did, to Italy; and it was my good fortune thatDon John had just arrived at Genoa, and was going on to Naples to jointhe Venetian fleet, as he afterwards did at Messina. I may say, inshort, that I took part in that glorious expedition, promoted bythis time to be a captain of infantry, to which honourable charge mygood luck rather than my merits raised me; and that day- sofortunate for Christendom, because then all the nations of the earthwere disabused of the error under which they lay in imagining theTurks to be invincible on sea-on that day, I say, on which the Ottomanpride and arrogance were broken, among all that were there madehappy (for the Christians who died that day were happier than thosewho remained alive and victorious) I alone was miserable; for, insteadof some naval crown that I might have expected had it been in Romantimes, on the night that followed that famous day I found myselfwith fetters on my feet and manacles on my hands.

It happened in this way: El Uchali, the king of Algiers, a daringand successful corsair, having attacked and taken the leadingMaltese galley (only three knights being left alive in it, and theybadly wounded), the chief galley of John Andrea, on board of which Iand my company were placed, came to its relief, and doing as was boundto do in such a case, I leaped on board the enemy's galley, which,sheering off from that which had attacked it, prevented my men fromfollowing me, and so I found myself alone in the midst of myenemies, who were in such numbers that I was unable to resist; inshort I was taken, covered with wounds; El Uchali, as you know,sirs, made his escape with his entire squadron, and I was left aprisoner in his power, the only sad being among so many filled withjoy, and the only captive among so many free; for there were fifteenthousand Christians, all at the oar in the Turkish fleet, thatregained their longed-for liberty that day.

They carried me to Constantinople, where the Grand Turk, Selim, mademy master general at sea for having done his duty in the battle andcarried off as evidence of his bravery the standard of the Order ofMalta. The following year, which was the year seventy-two, I foundmyself at Navarino rowing in the leading galley with the threelanterns. There I saw and observed how the opportunity of capturingthe whole Turkish fleet in harbour was lost; for all the marines andjanizzaries that belonged to it made sure that they were about to beattacked inside the very harbour, and had their kits and pasamaques,or shoes, ready to flee at once on shore without waiting to beassailed, in so great fear did they stand of our fleet. But Heavenordered it otherwise, not for any fault or neglect of the generalwho commanded on our side, but for the sins of Christendom, andbecause it was God's will and pleasure that we should always haveinstruments of punishment to chastise us. As it was, El Uchali tookrefuge at Modon, which is an island near Navarino, and landingforces fortified the mouth of the harbour and waited quietly until DonJohn retired. On this expedition was taken the galley called thePrize, whose captain was a son of the famous corsair Barbarossa. Itwas taken by the chief Neapolitan galley called the She-wolf,commanded by that thunderbolt of war, that father of his men, thatsuccessful and unconquered captain Don Alvaro de Bazan, Marquis ofSanta Cruz; and I cannot help telling you what took place at thecapture of the Prize.

The son of Barbarossa was so cruel, and treated his slaves so badly,that, when those who were at the oars saw that the She-wolf galley wasbearing down upon them and gaining upon them, they all at once droppedtheir oars and seized their captain who stood on the stage at theend of the gangway shouting to them to row lustily; and passing him onfrom bench to bench, from the poop to the prow, they so bit him thatbefore he had got much past the mast his soul had already got to hell;so great, as I said, was the cruelty with which he treated them, andthe hatred with which they hated him.

We returned to Constantinople, and the following year,seventy-three, it became known that Don John had seized Tunis andtaken the kingdom from the Turks, and placed Muley Hamet inpossession, putting an end to the hopes which Muley Hamida, thecruelest and bravest Moor in the world, entertained of returning toreign there. The Grand Turk took the loss greatly to heart, and withthe cunning which all his race possess, he made peace with theVenetians (who were much more eager for it than he was), and thefollowing year, seventy-four, he attacked the Goletta and the fortwhich Don John had left half built near Tunis. While all theseevents were occurring, I was labouring at the oar without any hopeof freedom; at least I had no hope of obtaining it by ransom, for Iwas firmly resolved not to write to my father telling him of mymisfortunes. At length the Goletta fell, and the fort fell, beforewhich places there were seventy-five thousand regular Turkishsoldiers, and more than four hundred thousand Moors and Arabs from allparts of Africa, and in the train of all this great host suchmunitions and engines of war, and so many pioneers that with theirhands they might have covered the Goletta and the fort with handfulsof earth. The first to fall was the Goletta, until then reckonedimpregnable, and it fell, not by any fault of its defenders, who didall that they could and should have done, but because experimentproved how easily entrenchments could be made in the desert sandthere; for water used to be found at two palms depth, while theTurks found none at two yards; and so by means of a quantity ofsandbags they raised their works so high that they commanded the wallsof the fort, sweeping them as if from a cavalier, so that no one wasable to make a stand or maintain the defence.

It was a common opinion that our men should not have shut themselvesup in the Goletta, but should have waited in the open at thelanding-place; but those who say so talk at random and with littleknowledge of such matters; for if in the Goletta and in the fort therewere barely seven thousand soldiers, how could such a small number,however resolute, sally out and hold their own against numbers likethose of the enemy? And how is it possible to help losing a strongholdthat is not relieved, above all when surrounded by a host ofdetermined enemies in their own country? But many thought, and Ithought so too, that it was special favour and mercy which Heavenshowed to Spain in permitting the destruction of that source andhiding place of mischief, that devourer, sponge, and moth of countlessmoney, fruitlessly wasted there to no other purpose save preservingthe memory of its capture by the invincible Charles V; as if to makethat eternal, as it is and will be, these stones were needed tosupport it. The fort also fell; but the Turks had to win it inch byinch, for the soldiers who defended it fought so gallantly and stoutlythat the number of the enemy killed in twenty-two general assaultsexceeded twenty-five thousand. Of three hundred that remained alivenot one was taken unwounded, a clear and manifest proof of theirgallantry and resolution, and how sturdily they had defendedthemselves and held their post. A small fort or tower which was in themiddle of the lagoon under the command of Don Juan Zanoguera, aValencian gentleman and a famous soldier, capitulated upon terms. Theytook prisoner Don Pedro Puertocarrero, commandant of the Goletta,who had done all in his power to defend his fortress, and took theloss of it so much to heart that he died of grief on the way toConstantinople, where they were carrying him a prisoner. They alsotook the commandant of the fort, Gabrio Cerbellon by name, aMilanese gentleman, a great engineer and a very brave soldier. Inthese two fortresses perished many persons of note, among whom wasPagano Doria, knight of the Order of St. John, a man of generousdisposition, as was shown by his extreme liberality to his brother,the famous John Andrea Doria; and what made his death the more sad wasthat he was slain by some Arabs to whom, seeing that the fort wasnow lost, he entrusted himself, and who offered to conduct him inthe disguise of a Moor to Tabarca, a small fort or station on thecoast held by the Genoese employed in the coral fishery. These Arabscut off his head and carried it to the commander of the Turkish fleet,who proved on them the truth of our Castilian proverb, that "thoughthe treason may please, the traitor is hated;" for they say he orderedthose who brought him the present to be hanged for not havingbrought him alive.

Among the Christians who were taken in the fort was one named DonPedro de Aguilar, a native of some place, I know not what, inAndalusia, who had been ensign in the fort, a soldier of greatrepute and rare intelligence, who had in particular a special gift forwhat they call poetry. I say so because his fate brought him to mygalley and to my bench, and made him a slave to the same master; andbefore we left the port this gentleman composed two sonnets by wayof epitaphs, one on the Goletta and the other on the fort; indeed, Imay as well repeat them, for I have them by heart, and I think theywill be liked rather than disliked.

The instant the captive mentioned the name of Don Pedro deAguilar, Don Fernando looked at his companions and they all threesmiled; and when he came to speak of the sonnets one of them said,"Before your worship proceeds any further I entreat you to tell mewhat became of that Don Pedro de Aguilar you have spoken of."