It may be said that heroism is a relative term, that it has many uses and applications all equally truthful. On the side of mere physical courage almost every man who took part in that memorable siege of Malta in the year 1565 may have been said to have earned the title of hero. No man’s foot went back; no man’s courage quailed; no man’s face blanched when called upon to face perils so appalling that they meant an almost inevitable and speedy death; this was true or Christian and Moslem alike. The death-roll on either side was so tremendous as to prove this contention up to the hilt. From May 18th to September 8th, 1565—that is to say, in one hundred and thirteen days—thirty thousand Moslems and eight thousand Christians perished—an average of some three hundred and thirty-six persons per day. In that blazing torrid heat the sufferings of those who survived from day to day must have been accentuated beyond bearing by the myriads of unburied corpses by which they lived surrounded; and that the contending forces were not swept away by pestilence is an extraordinary marvel. [Illustration: CARRACK IN WHICH THE KNIGHTS ARRIVED AT MALTA, 1530.] In many, nay, in most campaigns, personal feeling enters but little into the contest. Nationality strikes against nationality, army against army, or navy against navy; but no burning hatred of his adversary animates the breast of the combatant on either side; it may even be said that frequently some pity for the vanquished is felt, when all is over, by the side which has conquered. At Malta the element of actual personal individual hatred was the mainspring by which the combatants on both sides were moved; each regarded the other as an infidel, the slaying of whom was the sacrifice most acceptable to the God they worshipped. “Infidel” was the term which each hurled at the other; to destroy the infidel, root and branch, was the act imposed upon those whose faith was the one only passport to a blessed eternity, and those who fell in the strife, whether Christian or Moslem, felt assured that for them the gates of heaven stood wide open.