Before this, some stirring actions had been fought off the coasts of Greece. Doria, sallying forth from Messina, had met the governor of Gallipoli off Paxos, and had fought him before daybreak. Standing erect on the poop, conspicuous in his cramoisy doublet, the tall figure of the old admiral was seen for an hour and a half directing the conflict, sword in hand, an easy mark for sharpshooters, as a wound in the knee reminded him. After a severe struggle the twelve galleys of the enemy were captured and carried in triumph to Messina. Barbarossa was sorely wanted now, and in May, 1537, he sailed with one hundred and thirty-five galleys to avenge the insult. For a whole month he laid waste the Apulian coast like a pestilence, and carried off ten thousand slaves, while Doria lay helpless with a far inferior force in Messina roads. The Turks were boasting that they might soon set up a Pope of their own, when the war with Venice broke out, and they were called off from their devastation of Italy by the Sultan's command to besiege Corfu. The Ionian islands were always a bone of contention between the Turks and their neighbours, and a war with Venice naturally began with an attack upon Corfu. The Senate had shut its eyes as long as possible to the destination of the huge armaments which had left Constantinople in the spring: Tunis, or perhaps Naples, was said to be their object. But now they were undeceived, and on the 25th of August, Captain Pasha Barbarossa landed twenty-five thousand men and thirty cannon under Lutfi Pasha, three miles from the castle of Corfu. Four days later the Grand Vezīr Ayās, with twenty-five thousand more and a brilliant staff, joined the first-comers, and the Akinji or light troops spread fire and sword around. A fifty-pounder fired nineteen shots in three days, but only five struck the fortress: the Turks fired too high, and many of their missiles fell harmlessly into the sea beyond. In spite of storm and rain the Grand Vezīr would not desist from making the round of the trenches by night. Suleymān offered liberal terms of capitulation, but the besieged sent back his messenger with never an answer. Alexandro Tron worked the big guns of the castle with terrible precision. Two galleys were quickly sunk, four men were killed in the trenches by a single shot--a new and alarming experience in those early days of gunnery--four times the Fort of St. Angelo was attacked in vain; winter was approaching, and the Sultan determined to raise the siege. In vain Barbarossa remonstrated: "A thousand such castles were not worth the life of one of his brave men," said the Sultan, and on the 17th of September the troops began to re-embark.[34]