That Cervantes’ share in this encounter was of material service in contributing to its successful issue, is evidenced by the fact that in an army of 26,000 soldiers and sailors he won the most distinguished measure of individual renown. That he held the post of greatest danger, that he was the first to board the galley, and bore himself with intrepid gallantry, we know on the sworn testimony of Mateo de Santisteban and others of his comrades. The evidence is supported by the unusual interest and concern that Don Juan evinced in him, raising his pay by five or six _escudos_, and visiting him in the Hospital of Messina. For Cervantes had not come through the battle unscathed. In his breast he received two arquebus wounds, while his left hand was injured by a ball, which rendered it useless for the remainder of his life. In Sola’s bronze statue of Cervantes, at Barcelona, “El manco de Lepanto,” as his countrymen have proudly styled him, is represented with his maimed hand hidden beneath his cloak; although, during his lifetime, he carried with pride the wounds received in “the most memorable of all occasions past, present, or to come”--“wounds that show like stars, lighting us on to heaven and to fame”--and declared that his useless left hand was crippled “for the greater glory of the right.” Between 1571 and 1575 Cervantes lived the strenuous life of a private soldier, taking part in two campaigns, fighting with enthusiasm, enduring wounds and hardships with stoical fortitude, and acquiring that knowledge of men and things which he was afterwards to employ to such good purpose. His injuries were tended at Messina, but he returned to his duties before they were properly healed; and two years later, when he went to Tunis in the army of Don Juan, he writes to Mateo Vasquez that his wounds were “yet dripping with blood.” After his discharge from the hospital, he was transferred to the _tercio de Figueroa_, commanded by Don Manuel Ponce de Leon; and, as a _soldado aventajado_, or select soldier, in the most famous infantry regiment of Spain, he was on the high road to promotion and a distinguished career. In the story of “The Captive,” in _Don Quixote_ (Part I., Chapter xxxix.), Cervantes has left us a graphic account of the ineffective and inglorious second campaign of the allies in the Levant, which was followed by the dissolution of the Holy League. Cervantes repaired with his regiment to Naples, and, after the Tunis expedition, he was for some time in garrison in the Island of Sardinia, before being sent to Genoa by the order of Don Juan.