CHAP. II.] ST. JOHN OF JERUSALEM. 7

Where emigration is necessary, perhaps masque-rade may be so too. Their brothers in armswould have thought it a noble charity to acceptthem under translated titles, incorporated theminto their own body, and giving them a newnationality, keep their secret. Nor is it easy toblame either such refugees or such donors. Ifthey concealed their names, it is to be supposedthey had sufficient reason for it; so leave them tothe Lethe they chose. Or if that sound harsh, isit not remediless? Who is able to deter them,even were it not over late?

On the 8th of May, two hundred of the Spaniards,promised by Toledo, appeared, very jewels of primesoldiery. The Turkish fleet, proceeding towardsMalta, were however traced every step, and thegrand master exactly informed of each of theirmovements; how they suffered from storms, and ina calm were carried by the current on sandbanks,where, on one occasion, off Cerigo, they had onethousand men drowned, chiefly Spaliis, and onanother lost two of the heaviest cannons, andabove eight thousand barrels of gunpowder, withone thousand three hundred cannon-balls of castiron, which agreed with an ill-omen on their leav-ing Constantinople; so that the Turks were not theleast surprised when they heard of these disasters;