s man the genius of the statesman lay hidden
beneath the outward semblance of the bold and ruthless pirate; ever
foremost in the fight, strong to endure, swift to smite, he had by now long
passed his novitiate, had established an empire over the minds of men which
was to endure until the end of his unusually prolonged life. With a brain
of ice and a heart of fire, he looked out, serene and calm, upon the
turbulent times in which he lived, a monstrous egotist desiring nothing but
his own advancement, all his faculties bent upon securing more wealth and
yet more power.

He played a lone hand, for he brooked even less than did his truculent
brother any approach to an equality with himself among the men who followed
in his train. Absolute supremacy was his in the life which he lived, but
none knew better than he upon what an unstable basis his power rested. He
now called himself the King of Algiers, but still that lean, sun-dried
garrison held with desperate tenacity to the tower of the redoubtable
Navarro, and any moment a fresh Spanish relieving force might be upon him
and chase him forth even as Uruj had been chased from Tlemcen. He saw that
he must consolidate his power, must for the present, at any rate, have some
force at his back which would provide that material and moral backing which
was essential to his schemes. Once before he had successfully approached
the Grand Turk, the Padishah, the head of the Mohammedan religion, and from
him he had received that which he had asked; on this former occasion,
however, he had not been in the same position as he now occupied.

The corsair must have meditated long and anxiously on the best way in which
to approach the autocrat of Constantinople; in the end he probably hit upon
the best solution of the problem by again sending an ambassador with
precise instructions as to the manner in which he was to act. For this
important service his choice fell upon one of his captains, Hadj-Hossein by
name, and to him he imparted all that he was to say, and--what was almost
as important--what he was not to say.

The duty of the ambassador was to magnify the importance of his master, but
to do so in such a manner that the Padishah was not to imagine that a rival
to his own greatness had arisen at Algiers. Selim was at this time in
Egypt, where he had just completed the conquest of the Mamelukes, and
thither did Hadj-Hossein repair. He laid at the feet of the conqueror the
respectful homage