Condalmiero, captain of the _Galleon of Venice_.
This was the most formidable fighting vessel in the Mediterranean; she was
reckoned an excellent sailor, she was by far the most heavily armed sailing
ship then afloat; in fact, in the opinion of contemporary seamen, she was
"an invincible fortress."

Doria, Grimani, and Capello had now nearly 200 ships carrying nearly 60,000
men. Such a force, in all ages, has been considered great. William the
Conqueror conquered Britain with a less number; it is almost half the total
of the personnel of the British fleet in the present day which has to
defend a country with 40,000,000 inhabitants, and all this force had been
raised, armed, and equipped to combat with a Moslem corsair.

Barbarossa had succeeded in assembling 122 ships. He was accompanied by all
the most famous corsairs of the day, among whom was Dragut, who fell at the
siege of Malta, and of whom we shall have more to say in due time. Far and
wide ranged the swift galleys of the Ottoman fleet, for the plan of the
commander of the Moslems was to locate and destroy his enemies in detail if
possible. At last news came to him that Grimani's ships had been sighted in
the Gulf of Arta. Not one moment did he lose; he would fall upon the Papal
contingent with his whole force and destroy it utterly. Such, at least, was
his plan when he sailed for Prevesa; but, notwithstanding his haste, he was
too late. Happily for himself, Grimani had returned to Corfu before the
arrival of his enemy.

At this juncture Barbarossa hesitated; had he not done so, and had he
followed Grimani to Corfu, he might have destroyed both him and Vincenzo
Capello in detail before the arrival of Doria. The Prevesa campaign is a
curious study of hesitation on both sides, and the idea naturally occurs
were not the corsair and the Christian commanders-in-chief too old for the
work on which they were engaged? Men of over seventy are not impetuous, but
grave and deliberate as a rule; but there is no rule without its
exceptions, and Doria and Barbarossa were not as other leaders. Up to the
present their dash and initiative had been unimpaired. There was no
question that Barbarossa not only made a mistake in hesitating, but that by
it he lost the game. Instead of striking at once he did what he had never
done before in the whole of his career, which was to send to Constantinople
for instructions. Some of his galleys had captured a fishing-boat off
Corfu, the crew