And the Yeah, Welcome back everyone to

to one thousand one classic short stories and tales.

Today's story is really a non-fiction story,

well-researched and brilliantly written

by Charlotte Young, who gave us the last fight in the Coliseum, among others, which you will find

in our archives.

We'll be taking you back to the last stand of the Knights Hospitaler in 1565 as they defend the island of Malta from a full-scale

attack by the Ottoman Turks under the leadership of Suleiman the Magnificent.

I promise you it's a gut-wrenching story that will keep you on the edge of your

seats a story which she pulled from eyewitness accounts of the siege and now Fort

Se delmo by Charlotte Young. 5. 1565, the White Cross of the Order of St. John waved on the towers of

roads for 255 years.

In 1552, after a desperate resistance, the Turks under their great Sultan Suleiman

the Magnificent, succeeded in driving the Knights Hospitallers from their beautiful home, and they were again cast upon the world.

They were resolved, however, to continue their old work of protecting the Mediterranean travelers and

thankfully accepted as a gift from the Emperor Charles the 5th

the little islet of Malta as their new station. It was a great contrast to their former home, being little more

than a mere rock rising steeply out of the sea, white, glaring, and with very shallow earth, unfit the bare corn, though it produced plenty of oranges,

figs, and melons.

With little water and no wood, the building's wretched, and for the most part uninhabited. And the few people

a miserable mongrel set part Arab, part Greek, part Sicilian, and constantly kept down by the descents of the Moorish pirates

who used to land in the unprotected bays and carry off all the wretched beings they could

...