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DETAILS OF THE FIGHT 261 the period. As they approach the Straits, when they are well in view from the Sphendone, they are met by the Turkish admiral who from the poop of his trireme com- mands them peremptorily to lower their sails. On their refusal he gives orders for attack. The leading boats pull Fight for the ships, but both the advantages of wind and a consider- mences. able sea were with the larger vessels, while their greater height from the water made boarding under the circum- stances extremely difficult. The Italians with axes and boafchooks make short work of any who attempt it. The skirmish became a running fight in which the attackers shot their arrows and fire-bearing darts and threw their lances with little effect. The south wind continuing to blow, the ships held on their course until they entered the Bosporus and came near Seraglio Point. Then, all of a sudden, the wind fell, 1 and wind in a few minutes the sails flap idly under the very walls of drops " the Acropolis. 2 The sudden fall of the wind had shifted the advantage of the position from the ships to the Turkish fleet. Then, indeed, says Pusculus, the real fight commenced. The Turkish admiral had apparently now complete justification for the belief that he would have an easy capture. The four ships were powerless to move, while Baltoglu could choose his own mode of attack by his hundred and fifty fighting vessels. When, while the ships were under the walls of the Acropolis, the wind fell, they would nevertheless drift over towards the G-alata shore of the Bosporus by the current which after a south wind invariably sets in that direction. Probably they would be influenced also by the last puffs which usually follow the sudden dropping of the south wind near Constantinople. The remainder of the combat is therefore to be fought at the mouth of the Golden Horn, between Seraglio Point and the shore east of Galata near Tophana, and just outside the walls of that city. 1 Barbaro says, ' Quando queste quatro naves fo per mezo la zitade de Constantinopli subito el vento i bonazo ' (p. 23). 2 Pusculus iv. v. 415 : ' Deserit illic ventus eas ; cecidere sinus sub moenibus arcis.'