CHAPTER IXMalta stirred like a threatened hive.
The Knights of St. John had been preparing for this hour by excavation of solid rock, by battery and barricade, ever since Charles V had given them the islands, forty years before. Every year, as Christian power had declined and that of Islam advanced in Eastern Europe by land and sea, it had become a darker and more imminent menace; and the same causes that had brought it near had decreased their power to hold it longer at bay. Christians had ceased to think of the tomb of Christ, or of the breaking of infidel power, being at issue among themselves. Those who had adventurous rather than pious minds turned their eyes to the west, to the wealth and empire of a new world which had the lure of the hardly-known.
When Charles V gave the Maltese
