must have been in their flight to Bona
they alone knew. It was the height of summer, and burning tracks of desert
and rugged mountain passes had to be surmounted; naturally they could have
carried but very little food, and water they had to find on the way. In
addition to this, as we have seen in the despatch of Charles, the tribesmen
turned against them, cutting off stragglers and murdering and plundering as
opportunity offered. Barbarossa himself was an old man, so old that it
seems nothing short of a miracle that he should have survived the hardships
of this awful march. Not only did he do this, but apparently arrived at
Bona in condition to continue his journey by sea at once, had he cared to
do so. He had lost his newly acquired kingdom, he had lost nearly his
entire fleet, his arsenal and stores were in the hands of his enemies; if
ever a man was completely crushed it was he on this memorable occasion. As
we have said before, however, it was in times of the greatest stress when
the indomitable character of this man rose to meet the occasion, and, while
his foes were congratulating one another that at last there was an end of
the scourge of the Mediterranean and the bugbear of Christendom, the hunted
fugitive was merely preparing himself for fresh acts of aggression.

The real fact of the matter was that he was above all and before all a
seaman. The defeat of Kheyr-ed-Din meant merely the transference of his
malign activities from one sphere to another--from the sea to the land, or
from the land to the sea. King he called himself, and king _de facto_ he
was both in Algiers and Tunis, reigning with unexampled cruelty, a
prototype of those other corsair kings by whom he was succeeded. But the
real source of his power lay, not in stone walls and fortifications, nor in
ill-trained levies of African tribes, but in his own genius for command at
sea, and the manner in which he was able to inspire with his own dauntless
and desperate spirit those hardy mariners who followed in his train, the
descendants of the "Moriscoes" who hailed from the ancient Moorish kingdoms
of Cordoba and Granada.

Thus it was in the present instance. He had been unable to withstand the
might of Caesar and his legions, but Tunis was not the whole of Northern
Africa, nor had quite all his eggs been kept in that one basket. He had
kept fifteen galleys in reserve at Bona, and, in consequence, on his
arrival there, was able to embark at once. This he