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By Root 647 0

and the fort there were barely seven thousand soldiers, and how could so small a number, no matter how brave, have gone into open country and defended the forts at the same time against the far larger numbers of the enemy? And how is it possible not to lose a fort when there is no relief, and it is surrounded by so many resolute enemies fighting on their own land? But it seemed to many, and it seemed to me, that it was a special grace and mercy that heaven conferred on Spain when it allowed the destruction of that breeding ground and shelter for wickedness, that voracious, gluttonous devourer of infinite amounts of money spent there to no avail, yet serving no other purpose than to preserve the happy memory of its having been captured by the invincible Carlos V, as if those stones were necessary to make his fame eternal, as it is now and forever will be. The fort was lost, too, but the Turks had to take it a span at a time, because the soldiers who defended it fought so valiantly and fiercely that they killed more than twenty-five thousand of the enemy in twenty-two general assaults. Three hundred of our soldiers survived, every one of them wounded when he was taken prisoner, a sure and certain sign of their tenacity and valor and of how well they defended and protected their positions. A small fortress or tower in the middle of the lagoon, commanded by Don Juan Zanoguera, a famous gentleman and soldier from Valencia, surrendered on advantageous terms. They captured Don Pedro Puertocarrero, the general in command of the Goletta, who did everything possible to defend the fortress and felt its loss so deeply that he died of sorrow on the road to Constantinople, where he was being taken as a prisoner. They also captured the general in command of the fort, whose name was Gabrio Cervellón, a Milanese gentleman who was a great engineer and a very courageous soldier.

Many notable men died in those two forts; one was Pagán Doria, a knight of the Order of St. John, an extremely generous man who showed great liberality to his brother, the famous Juan de Andrea Doria; what made his death even sadder was that he died at the hands of some Arabs whom he trusted when he saw that the fort was lost; they offered to take him, dressed as a Moor, to Tabarca, a small port where the Genoese who engage in the coral trade along these shores keep a house; these Arabs cut off his head and took it to the commander of the Turkish fleet, who confirmed for them our Spanish proverb: ‘For the treason we are grateful, though we find the traitor hateful.’ And so, they say, the commander ordered the two who brought him the present to be hanged because they did not bring the man to him alive. Among the Christians captured in the fort, there was one named Don Pedro de Aguilar, a native of Andalucía, though I do not know the town, who had been an ensign, and a soldier of great note and rare intelligence; he had a special gift for what they call poetry. I say this because his luck brought him to my galley, and my bench, to be the slave of my master, and before we left that port this gentleman composed two sonnets as epitaphs, one for the Goletta and the other for the fort. The truth is I must recite them, because I know them by heart, and I believe they will give you more pleasure than grief.”

When the captive named Don Pedro de Aguilar, Don Fernando looked at his companions, and all three of them smiled, and when the captive mentioned the sonnets, one of them said:

“Before your grace continues, I beg you to tell me what happened to this Don Pedro de Aguilar.”

“What I do know,” responded the captive, “is that after spending two years in Constantinople he escaped, disguised as an Albanian and in the company of a Greek spy, and I do not know if he obtained his freedom, though I believe he did, because a year later I saw the Greek in Constantinople but could not ask if they had been successful.”

“Well, they were,” responded the gentleman, “for Don Pedro is my brother, and he is now in our home, safe, rich, and married, with three children.”

“Thanks be to God,