active Theodotus, governor of Castrogiovanni, who craftily intercepted and cut to pieces a foraging detachment, and soon afterwards defeated the Moslems in a pitched battle in which they lost a thousand men. The siege was raised; the invaders retreated in confusion to Mineo; the inhabitants of the smaller fortresses, which the Moslems had occupied on their route, rebelled and massacred the garrisons; the sight of a turbaned horseman was sufficient to infuriate the peasantry of an entire province; and after two years of frightful privation and incessant conflict, the Moslems saw themselves restricted to the isolated fortified towns of Mineo and Mazara, which they themselves had taken without difficulty, and of whose possession they were scarcely sure for a single day in the face of a vindictive and determined enemy. While the affairs of the invaders had grown desperate, and the speedy abandonment of the island seemed inevitable, fortune, with her proverbial fickleness, once more smiled upon them. A fleet manned by Spanish adventurers and commanded by an experienced officer, Asbagh-Ibn-Wikil, landed supplies and troops which strengthened the position of the despairing Saracens. The Greek emperor, Michael the Stammerer, died, and was succeeded by the weak and cruel Theophilus, who, amidst the pleasures of the Byzantine capital and the indulgence of his savage and perfidious instincts, had neither time nor treasure to devote to the recovery of the most important island of his dominions. The Venetian squadron in the pay of the Emperor, left without co-operation with the land forces, seeing little prospect of victory and still less of plunder, sailed ingloriously away, abandoning the decimated Byzantine army to the tender mercies of the Moorish pirates, who landing on all sides again swarmed over the island.