The combat now became general, and, as has been said, was for the most part nothing but a melee, in which each ship sought out the nearest of her foes and closed with her. For some time the fight went hard with Don John; time and again the galley of the Moslem leader was boarded, but on each occasion the Spaniards were hurled back upon their own decks. Loredano and Malipier, two Venetian captains, fell upon seven Turkish galleys which were hastening to reinforce the attack on Don John, and sank one of them. They then fought with such fury and resolution with the six that remained that, although both captains were killed, it was conceded that they had saved their general, entirely altered the complexion of the battle in their neighbourhood, and facilitated the capture of the Turkish admiral. The determined conduct of the two Venetians allowed the Spanish division to close in on the Turkish flagship, which, after an heroic resistance, was captured, principally because there were practically none left alive to fight. The head of Ali was struck off by a Spanish soldier, the banner of the Moslems was replaced by the flag of the Cross, the head of Ali on a pike being exhibited in derision above it. The conquerors seem to have seen no incongruity in this performance. The lowering of the sacred standard of the Capitan-Basha had a disheartening effect upon the Turks; they knew by this that their Commander-in-Chief was dead and his ship captured, the result being that the resistance of the Ottomans began to weaken. Then thirty galleys took to flight from the neighbourhood of the Christian flagship; so hotly were they pursued that they ran on shore, the crews swimming or wading to the beach and making off inland.
On the right of the Christian line things had not been going so propitiously for them. Here Occhiali had managed, by his apparently persistent attempts to outflank John Andrea Doria, to decoy that commander away from his supports and from the main body of the Christians. This tactical manoeuvre of the corsair was successful; having drawn off some fifteen of the Christian galleys, he suddenly flung the whole of his greatly superior force into the gap and surrounded them. These galleys were Spanish, Venetian, and Maltese, and, although they offered a most vigorous resistance, they were mostly destroyed or captured. Doria, in spite of all his efforts, was on this day both outgeneralled and outfought: the Sea-wolves, under their grim leader, manoeuvring for position, obtaining it, and then falling like a thunderbolt on the foe. They were all brave men at Lepanto on this memorable October day; but few there were like the corsair king, in whom a heart of fire was kept in check by a brain of ice, who, during the whole combat, never gave away a chance, or failed to swoop like an eagle from his eyry when the blunders of his enemy gave him the opportunity for which he watched. It was the old story of “the veritable man of the sea” pitted against gallant soldiers fighting on an unfamiliar element. And yet it was against the best seaman on the Christian side that Occhiali pitted himself on this stricken field; and none can deny that with him rested such honour as was gained by the Turks on this day, the day which broke up for ever the idea of the invincibility of the Ottomans on the water. It needs not to say, to those who have read the story of the siege of Malta, how the Knights comported themselves in the battle; and yet Occhiali captured the _Capitana_, or principal galley of the Order, He was towing her out of action, a prize, when the Marquis of Santa Cruz bore down upon him with the reserve. By this time the battle was lost; the Moslems were in full retreat.