So far communication remained established between St. Elmo and their comrades in Il Borgo on the opposite side of the harbour; in consequence the wounded were removed and their places taken by one hundred fresh men under the Chevalier Vagnon. To the Bailli of Negropont and the Commandeur Broglio, La Valette sent a message to return to Il Borgo. These gallant and aged veterans, both of whom were wounded, whose faces were scorched by the sun and blackened with powder, whose bodies were well-nigh worn out with perpetual vigil and hand-to-hand fighting, refused stoutly to quit their post, which now was naught but a dreadful shambles filled with corpses mangled out of recognition and heads and limbs which had been torn and hacked from their bodies. Dragut now proposed to erect batteries on the same side of the Great Port as that on which Il Borgo was situated; on the point now known as Ricasoli, but which was then and for centuries afterwards known as the Punta Delle Forche (or Point of the Gallows, because it was here that all pirates was executed; and their bodies, swinging in chains, were the first objects that met the eye on entering the Great Port). In this he was overruled by Piali, who declared that he had not sufficient men to spare, and the Knights of II Borgo would soon render the battery untenable even if they should succeed in erecting it, which the Turkish admiral now considered extremely doubtful. The siege of St. Elmo, which Mustafa had said would last at the outside for five or six days, had now been in progress for four weeks; and, although the fort was in a ruinous condition, nothing seemed capable of daunting those invincible warriors by which it was held.