eding their desire for a
meticulous accuracy in the matter of the exact time of their occurrence.
Uruj, as has been seen, had by his headstrong folly once again placed his
brother and himself in a decidedly awkward situation. By the losses which
he had incurred in his second ill-advised attempt on Bougie he had so
weakened the piratical confederation that the countenance of some potentate
had again become necessary for their continued existence, and the Sultan of
Tunis had now repudiated all connection with these ingrates.

But, if craft and subtlety were not to be found in Uruj there was one who
never failed to exhibit these qualities when they became necessary, and
Kheyr-ed-Din once more came to the front. The Russian peasantry have a
saying that "God is high and the Czar is far away." In the sixteenth
century the Grand Turk was in every sense "far away" from the struggling
corsairs on the littoral of Northern Africa, and was a sovereign of such
great and mysterious might that any man with a less fine instinct into the
psychology of the times in which he lived than Kheyr-ed-Din would have
hesitated long and anxiously before addressing him directly; would probably
in the end not have done so at all. But desperate diseases require
desperate remedies, and the politic corsair well knew that even the moral
support of such an one as the Sultan of Constantinople was worth more than
even material aid from a Sultan of Tunis.

Consequently, greatly daring, he sent an embassy to the Sublime Porte with
one of his most trusted captains at its head to lay the homage of the
corsairs at the feet of Selim I. Very naturally these ambassadors did not
go empty-handed, but took with them rich presents and numerous slaves.
Selim was much pleased at the attention, coming as it did from such a
distance--we have to remember that the coast of North Africa was an immense
journey from Constantinople in those days--and the insight of Kheyr-ed-Din
was triumphantly vindicated. Not only did the Sultan send a gracious reply
in return, but--what was far more to the purpose--he sent a reinforcement
of fourteen vessels to the corsairs bidding them to go on and prosper in
their efforts to spread the true faith among the Christian heretics.

There is nothing more curious in the history of the corsairs than the
perpetual ups and downs of their lives. Thus in the present instance the
ill-advised attack of Uruj on Bougie had reduced them to terrible straits;