This most beautiful island of Rhodes, which was about one third larger than Malta, embowered with palms and citron groves, flourished wonderfully under the sovereignty of the Knights, while the order itself steadily increased in numbers, power, and wealth. The neighboring islands of Telos, Syme, Nisyros, Cos, Leros, and Calymna, known on the old charts as the Sporades, were conquered one after another and annexed to the island of Rhodes, thus coming under the governorship of the Grand Masters of the Knights. While establishing themselves in this island and strengthening its half-ruined defenses, the most profitable employment of the Knights was privateering, or, more correctly, active piracy. They cruised against all Mohammedan and Greek vessels. True, their vows only bound them to perpetual warfare against the Turks, but a very little stretching of their consciences enabled them to see no wrong in capturing the commercial property of the Greeks also. It must be admitted that the latter people, as a maritime nation, were themselves ever a predatory race. Might alone made right in the waters of the Levant, and especially so in the Grecian archipelago. No candid writer can defend the marine policy of the Greeks, and perhaps the Knights of St. John only meted to these rovers the same treatment which they (the Greeks) were used to accord to others. All history shows that the eastern basin of the Mediterranean was for centuries a swarming nest of corsairs of various nationalities, Greeks, Turks, and Algerines. Any attempt to transfer a legitimate cargo of merchandise from an Asiatic to a European port by way of the Straits of Gibraltar was to run the gauntlet of a fleet of piratical vessels which preyed indiscriminately upon the commerce of all nations. Those we have named were the most numerous among these sea robbers, the Turks and Algerines making war together upon the Knights of Rhodes, who retaliated upon them with interest, both on the land and on the sea. The Knights pursued these powers with most unchristianlike vengeance, pertinacity, and success.