But Ali Pasha had also received reports that led him to underrate the strength of the Christian armada, and so induced him to put out to sea in search of it. Twice he had reconnoitred the allied fleet. Before Don Juan arrived at Messina, Ulugh Ali had sent one of his corsairs, Kara Khodja, to cruise in Sicilian waters. The corsair painted every part of his ship a dead black, and one dark night, under black sails, he slipped into Messina harbour. The utter daring of his enterprise assisted him. Gliding like a ghost about the roadstead, unmarked and unchallenged, he counted galleys, galleasses, and frigates, and brought back an under-estimate of the allied strength, only because the fleet was not yet all assembled. He repeated his exploit while the fleet lay in the waters of Corfu. He could not approach so closely as at Messina, but what he saw led him to believe it was no stronger than when he first reconnoitred it. When Ali Pasha questioned the prisoners taken at Gomenizza, using torture to make them answer him, he thought their admissions confirmed Kara Khodja's reports. So he decided to come out of Lepanto and attack the allied armada. Thus each fleet believed the other to be inferior in strength, and consequently desired an early engagement. The Turkish fleet was made up of 210 galleys and 64 galliots and smaller craft, 274 sail in all, and its commander, Ali Pasha, was one of the veteran admirals of Suleiman's victorious days; 25,000 soldiers had been embarked under the Seraskier, or General, Pertev Pasha. Ali had organized his fleet in four divisions, centre, right wing, left wing, and reserve. All the ships had oars as well as sails, and though Ali had no huge floating batteries, like the six galleasses of Don Juan's fleet, the Turkish admiral could match the Christians with galley for galley, and have a surplus of 8 galleys and 66 smaller craft. Of these the 44 galliots were almost as useful as the galleys. Unlike the latter, which had two and often three masts, the galliot had only one, and was smaller in size. But the Turkish galliots, mostly belonging to the piratical states of North Africa, were as large as many of the Christian galleys of the second class; they could sail well, and they were manned by crews of fighting-men that had a long record of piratical warfare. The organization of Ali's fleet was:--