It would appear that during the whole time that oar-propelled vessels were used as warships their form did not differ to any material extent, as certain limitations of size were obviously imposed on them by the mere fact that they had to be moved by so finite and feeble a force as human muscles, hearts, and lungs. No cruelty, however ghastly, could extract from the gallerians more than a certain amount of work, and the Captain Pantero Pantera, as we have seen, even advocates that a certain minimum of consideration should be shown to them in order that better work might be obtained. It was probable, however, that in the case of the Christian slaves captured by the corsairs even this minimum was to seek, as the numbers swept off by them were so enormous that they could be used up and replaced without inconveniencing these rovers of the sea, to whom compassion for suffering was absolutely unknown. The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, or the Knights of Malta as they were also called, used the galley in their unceasing warfare with the Moslem. The General of the Galleys was a Grand Cross of the Order; the captains were knights, and the second officer, or first lieutenant, was known as the Patron. The crew of a galley of the knights had twenty-six rowing benches and carried two hundred and eighty rowers and two hundred and eighty combatants; the armament consisted of one bow cannon which discharged a forty-eight pound ball, four other small guns, eight pounders, and fourteen others which discharged stones. “The Religion,” as the Knights were in the habit of describing themselves, had certain definite stations assigned to each knight, seaman, or officer during action. It is to be imagined, however, that these were merely for the preliminary stages of the fight, as it was seldom that time allowed for more than one discharge, or at the most two, of the artillery, before the opposing galleys met in a hand-to-hand conflict which must have immediately become an indiscriminate mêlée. The manner in which the galley should engage is thus contained in an answer to a question of Don John of Austria, the victor of Lepanto. He wrote to Garcia de Toledo, fourth Marquis of Villafranca, and General of the Galleys of Sicily, to ask his opinion as to what distance it was most efficacious to open fire in a naval action. Toledo replied that “one cannot fire more than twice before the galleys close. I should therefore recommend that the arquebussiers should hold their fire until they are so close to the enemy that his blood will leap into the face of him who discharges his piece. I have always heard it said, and this by captains who are well skilled in the art of war, that the last discharge of the cannon should be coincident with the noise made by the breaking of the spurs carried in the prows of the galleys; in fact that the two noises should be as one; some propose to fire before the enemy does: this is by no means my advice.”