idents of the voyage, interested himself graciously
in all that he was told concerning Africa and the conflicting claims of
Christian and Moslem in that region, and was generally courteous to his
distinguished visitor. He placed at his disposal a palace and attendants on
a scale commensurate with the state of a reigning sovereign, and sent his
most distinguished generals to confer with Kheyr-ed-Din. The latter, for
the first time in his life, was thoroughly out of his element. His had been
the life of the seaman and the soldier to begin with, and of later years
that of a rude and unquestioned despot on a savage coast, surrounded by
myrmidons to whom his voice had been as the voice of a god. Never had it
been his lot before to dwell within the limits of such a comparative
civilisation as that which obtained in Constantinople at this date; never
before had it been necessary for him to restrain that naturally fiery and
impetuous temper of his and to speak all men fairly.

The strain must have been great, the effort enormous, and he knew, as he
was bound to know, that his coming had unloosed jealousies and
heart-searchings innumerable, with which he could not deal in the usual
drastic fashion common to him. The winter was coming on, which was, as we
have before remarked, very much of a close season both for the pirate and
the honest merchant seaman. In consequence there was not very much chance
against the foes of Soliman for the present. When that opportunity offered
he promised himself that the courtiers and the soldiers of the Grand Turk
would very soon discover that the fame of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa was no
empty matter, and that there existed no seaman in all the Ottoman dominions
with whom they could compare the "African pirate," as he had reason to
believe that he was scornfully called behind his back.

A weaker man would have been daunted by his surroundings, by the manifestly
unfriendly atmosphere in which he lived, and by the dread that perhaps,
after all, Soliman might go back upon his word. There were no lack of
counsellors, he knew very well, who would advise the Sultan to his undoing,
if that monarch gave them the opportunity; and, as time passed, so his
anxiety grew. Soliman also could not have felt particularly comfortable at
this juncture, with a sullen spirit possessing his men "con carga de
guerra," bitterly resenting the step which he had taken, and the
appointment which he had made. For the present, how