gradually, such of them as were left, finding their way back to the
headquarters of piracy and its indomitable chieftain.

That cool calculator of the chances of life knew that this must be so; the
power of the corsairs generally had received the worst blow it had ever
encountered since the dispossessed Moriscoes had taken to the sea for a
living; those of them who remained alive were without ships--that is to
say, without their only means of making a livelihood--and that they should
gravitate towards Algiers and its master was as nearly a certainty as
anything human could be. And, as was anticipated by the chief, so it came
to pass. Into the city straggled broken, starving, sullen men who had lost
their all, for whom the future held nothing but misery and despair unless
they could get to sea once more.

It was on occasions such as this that the intellectual eminence of
Barbarossa was so marked. Rough and cruel as he was, he possessed
nevertheless a magnetic power over the minds of men, on which, when it so
pleased him, he could play with the most extraordinary effect. And now,
when the rank and file of the corsairs were ragged, hungry, and smarting
under defeat, he dealt with them tenderly and graciously; and the sum of
his teaching was to the effect that they had but to follow him once more
and all the evils from which they were suffering would be presently
remedied. So it came about that men who, before the defeat, had commanded
ships of their own, were glad enough to become units on board the galleys
of Kheyr-ed-Din, animated by the pleasing hope that soon again, under the
leadership of this man, they might regain all, nay more, than they had
lost. It must be remembered that Barbarossa argued from sound premises when
he held out such hopes as these to the desperate remnant of the corsairs in
Algiers in that sad winter of 1535. He was the greatest of them all, and
they, as well as he, knew this to be a fact: if they had lost their all in
the past battles, they had been fighting in a common cause to preserve
their own lives and their liberty to plunder the Christian at sea. And now
there was work and there was bread to eat for those who once again would
throw in their lot with their old leader; and, although it may be said that
these men had no alternative, still they threw themselves with heartiness
into that which the master mind decreed should be their work, and this was
none other than the preparation of the galley