e windows of which opened on the Bosphorus,
counted the ships.

"Only eighty sail; is that all?" he asked.

The trembling Viziers prostrated themselves before him.

"O our Lord, the Padishah," they cried, "Saleh-Reis comes from Alexandria
with a rich convoy; somewhere lurking is Andrea Doria, the accursed; it was
necessary, O Magnificent, to send succour."

There was a pause, in which the hearts of men beat as do those who know not
but that the next moment may be their last on earth.

The Sultan stared from his window at the retreating ships in a silence like
the silence of the grave. At last he turned:

"So be it," he answered briefly; "but see to it that reinforcements do not
lag upon the road."

If there had been activity in the dockyards before it was as nothing to the
strenuous work that was to be done henceforward.

Before starting on this expedition Kheyr-ed-Din had made an innovation in
the manning of some of the most powerful of his galleys, which was of the
utmost importance, and which was to add enormously to the success of his
future maritime enterprises. The custom had always been that the Ottoman
galleys had been rowed by Christians, captured and enslaved; of course the
converse was true in the galleys of their foes. There were, for the size of
the vessels, an enormous number of men carried in the galleys of the
sixteenth century, and an average craft of this description would have on
board some four hundred men; of these, however, the proportion would be two
hundred and fifty slaves to one hundred and fifty fighting men. That which
Kheyr-ed-Din now insisted upon was that a certain proportion of his most
powerful units should be rowed by Moslem fighting men, so that on the day
of battle the oarsmen could join in the fray instead of remaining chained
to their benches, as was the custom with the slaves. It is, however, an
extraordinary testimony to the influence which the corsair had attained in
Constantinople that he had been able to effect this change in the
composition of some of his crews; it must have been done with the active
co-operation of the Sultan, as no authority less potent than that of the
sovereign himself could have induced free men to undertake the terrible
toil of rower in a galley. This was reserved for the unfortunate slave on
either side owing to the intolerable hardship of the life, and results, in
the pace at which a galley proceeded through the water, were usually
obtained by