marily sea-robbers they were of course,
but as time and opportunity developed their characters they rose to meet
occasion, to take fortune at the flood, in a manner that, had they been
pursuing any other career, would most certainly have caused them to rise to
eminence. Into the fierce and blood-stained turmoil of their lives there
entered something unknown to any other pirates: this was religious
fanaticism--a fanaticism so engrained in character, a belief held to with
such passionate tenacity, that men stained with every conceivable crime
held that their passage to Paradise was absolutely secure because of the
faith which they professed. Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed
up in one trite formula; but though we, at this distance of time, may hold
it somewhat in derision, it was a vital force in the days of Soliman the
Magnificent; and there was an added zest to robbery and murder in the fact
that the pirates, as good Mohammedans, were obeying the behests of the
Prophet every time that they cut a Christian throat, plundered a Christian
argosy, or carried off shrieking women into a captivity far worse than
death.

That a pirate should be a warrior goes without saying, that a pirate should
be a statesman is a thing almost incredible; but those who will read the
story of the life of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa will be forced to admit that
here, at least, was a pirate who achieved the apparently impossible.
Admiral Jurien de la Graviere has remarked that the Moslem corsairs of the
sixteenth century were great men, even when measured by the standard of
Henry VIII., of Charles V., of Soliman the Magnificent, of Ibrahim, his
Grand Vizier, or of Andrea Doria, greatest among contemporary Christian
mariners. To the seaman, of course, there is much that is fascinating in
the deeds of his forerunners, and the ships of the corsairs had in them
something distinctive in that they were propelled by oars, and were in
consequence, to a certain extent, independent of the weather. Like the
sailors of all ages, to the Sea-wolves gales and storms of all sorts and
descriptions were abhorrent; and in consequence they had a well-marked
piracy season, which, as we shall see, covered the spring and summer, while
they carefully avoided the inclement months of autumn and winter.

In a later chapter an attempt has been made to place before the reader
pictures of the galley, the galeasse, and the nef, which were the names
attached to the ships