armol in their histories greet by the name of the "Modern Caesar." It
was told to Charles that Susa, Sfax, and Monastir had fallen, that "Africa"
was in the hands of the corsairs; "was he never to be free from these
pestilent knaves," he demanded of his trembling courtiers? Hot-foot came
the couriers from Charles to Andrea Doria, with orders to take Dragut dead
or alive, but alive for choice; and up and down the tideless sea in the
summer of 1549 did the great Genoese seaman range in search of the bold
corsair. Doria was getting a very old man now, but his eye was undimmed,
his strength yet tireless, his vigilance and zeal in the service of his
master unabated.

Dead or alive, great was the reward offered for the capture of Dragut, but
the veteran admiral required no stimulus of this sort to urge him to put
forth his utmost endeavours, to strain every nerve and sinew in the chase.
All his life he had been fighting the corsairs, mostly with conspicuous
success; but what Andrea could never forget--and what his enemies never
allowed him to forget even had he been so inclined--was the fact that, at
the supreme crisis of his valiant life, when he met with Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa at the battle of Prevesa, he had come off so badly that his
under officers of the Papal and Venetian fleets had made representations,
on their return to their respective headquarters, which had detracted from
his fame, and lowered him in the estimation of Europe. Further than this,
he knew that Barbarossa had laughed at and made game of him among his wild
followers: this to the aristocrat, the Prince of Oneglia, the admiral who
treated on almost equal terms with such men as the Pope, Charles of Spain,
and Francis of France, was an insult hard to be borne; the next corsair
with whom he should meet should not escape so easily as had Kheyr-ed-Din,
that the admiral had sworn.

Personal pique and vanity, racial detestation, and religious fanaticism
were in his case all allied together to spur him on in the chase of this
the last of the Emperor's foes; but, search as he might, during that summer
Doria could never get on to the track of Dragut. The corsairs, as we have
just remarked, were fine fighters on occasion when it was necessary for the
purposes of loot, or of escape from those who, like Doria, interfered with
their particular method of gaining a livelihood; but, on the other hand,
they were no fools, they did not covet hard knocks and the possibility