master, as they seem to have been deficient in every quality save
that of personal valor, and in their encounters with Doria and the
knights were almost invariably worsted. For the sake of Islam, for the
prestige of the Moslem arms at sea, it was time that Barbarossa should
take matters in hand once more.

The autumn of this year 1537 proved that the old Sea-wolf had lost none
of his cunning, that his followers were as terrible as ever. What did it
seem to matter that Venetian and Catalan, Genoese and Frenchman,
Andalusian and the dwellers in the Archipelago, were all banded together
in league against this common foe? Did not the redoubtable Andrea range
the seas in vain, and were not all the efforts of the Knights of Saint
John futile, when the son of the renegado from Mitylene and his
Christian wife put forth from the Golden Horn? What was the magic of
this man, it was asked despairingly, that none seemed able to prevail
against him? Had it not been currently reported that Carlos Quinto, the
great Emperor, had driven him forth from Tunis a hunted fugitive, broken
and penniless, with never a galley left, without one ducat in his
pocket? Was he so different, then, from all the rest of mankind that his
followers would stick to him in evil report as well as in the height of
his prosperity? Men swore and women crossed themselves at the mention of
his name.

"Terrible as an army with banners," indeed, was Kheyr-ed-Din in this
eventful summer: things had gone badly with the crescent flag, the
Padishah was unapproachable in his palace, brooding perchance on that
"might have been" had he not sold his honor and the life of his only
friend to gratify the malice of a she-devil; those in attendance on the
Sultan trembled, for the humor of the despot was black indeed.

But "the veritable man of the sea" was in some sort to console him for
that which he had lost; as never in his own history--and there was none
else with which it could be compared--had the Corsair King made so
fruitful a raid. He ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic and the islands
of the Archipelago, sweeping in slaves by the thousand, and by the end
of the year he had collected eighteen thousand in the arsenal at
Stamboul. Great was the jubilation in Constantinople when the
Admiralissimo himself returned from his last expedition against the
infidel; stilled were the voices which hinted disaffection--who among
them all could bring back four hundred thousand pieces o