It cannot be denied that, in acting as he did, the corsair displayed a self-restraint and a loyalty to the Sultan hardly to be expected in the circumstances. The jealousy which so often obtains among rival commanders was singularly in evidence in the forces of the Padishah: Dragut had good cause to be dissatisfied with the dispositions which had been made, and yet, for the reasons which we have quoted, he allowed them to proceed. Before the Basha had left Tripoli he had been engaged in communications with Muley Hamid, the then King of Tunis, who was feudatory of Spain. Anxious as was the corsair to aid in attacking his implacable enemies, the Knights, he could not afford to leave his own flank unguarded in Africa. He succeeded, however, in arriving at an understanding with the King of Tunis, and, further than this, he had assured himself, by means of his spies, that the succours which were to be sent from Sicily by the Spanish King could not possibly arrive for another two months. It was the negotiations which he was obliged to undertake with Muley Hamid which had caused his late arrival. As far as it is possible to judge, it was this circumstance, which (added to their own incomparable valour) turned the scale in favour of the Knights. Among all those brave men at Malta, on both sides, in this flaming month of June 1565, there were none who excelled the Basha of Tripoli. “No one had ever seen a more intrepid general officer,” says de Vertot. “He passed entire days in the trenches and at the batteries. Among his different talents none understood better than did he the direction and conduct of artillery, which was his special _métier_. By his orders on June 1st a second battery was constructed closer to the fort and parallel to the one already in existence, in order that an absolutely continuous fire might be maintained. He mounted four guns on the opposite side of Marsa Muzetto Harbour on a projecting point of land, from which a further enfilading fire smote the doomed fortress on the flank: this point has been known ever since as the Point Dragut.”