d by
the Sea-wolves, but a valuable convoy had been captured. An expedition, in
consequence, was sent by the Spaniards against the Barbarossas, but this
effort did not result in much damage being done to the offenders. The
Spaniards destroyed four piratical vessels which had been abandoned by
their crews at Bizerta, and pushed a strong reconnaissance into the Bay of
Tunis itself. Here shots were exchanged between the Spanish fleet and the
forts--under which Kheyr-ed-Din had drawn up his ships--and the Spaniards
then abandoned the enterprise and returned from whence they had come.

In the year 1510 the Spaniard, Count Pedro Navarre, had seized upon
Algiers, which town was at this time one of the principal refuges of the
Moorish fugitives, who had been driven from Granada, from Cordoba, and from
Southern Spain generally by Ferdinand and Isabella eighteen years
previously. To say that the condition of these people was desperate is to
speak but the bare truth, for what could exceed the misery of the situation
in which they were left after the successful incursion of their Christian
foes? What we are apt to lose sight of in the light of present-day
circumstances is the fact that these Spanish Moors were a most highly
civilised people, far more so indeed than their Christian contemporaries;
that they had been driven with fire and sword from the land in which they
and their forefathers had dwelt for over seven centuries, and that they now
had been cast out literally to starve on the inhospitable shores of
Northern Africa. So it came about that the common people exchanged the life
of the peaceful and prosperous artisan or husbandman for that of the
hand-to-mouth pirate, and the case of knight and noble among them was no
better--perhaps rather worse--than the meanest among those who had been
expropriated.

Those who know the region in which these unhappy folk lived are aware of
the material monuments which still exist and testify to the glorious past;
and, seeing what they have seen, it is no great stretch of the imagination
to picture to themselves the comfort, the elegance, and the luxury with
which the inhabitants of Granada and Cordoba lived surrounded. Over there,
away across some few leagues of shining blue water, were the ruined homes
of which many of the banished people still possessed the keys, awaiting the
day when Allah and the Prophet should vouchsafe to them that return which
they so naturally and ardently desired.