rd more of these plots
he would infallibly sacrifice every mother's son amongst them, and then lay
the town in ashes." Having already had a taste of the quality of this
redoubtable corsair, and feeling perfectly certain that should the occasion
arise he would be as good as his word, there was no more disaffection among
the inhabitants, who had to put up with their native place being made a
cockpit for Doria and Dragut to fight out their quarrel. It is permissible
to sympathise very sincerely with these unfortunates, who, having been
betrayed in the first instance, were compelled to stand a siege in the
second.

Aisa had a picked force of his uncle's men, some seventeen hundred foot and
six hundred horse, all seasoned and formidable veterans, inured to warfare
by land and sea. On these of course he could rely to the death. The common
folk of the town were inclined to make common cause with the corsairs in
resistance to their hereditary enemy the Christians; but the magistrates
and members of the council, the grave and reverend signiors, held so
conspicuously aloof that Aisa was constrained into forcing them to aid in
the defence when he had time to attend to the matter. As Dragut was not
actually present at the siege it falls outside the scope of this chronicle;
he was without the walls when the besiegers arrived, but all that he could
do, that he did. With a body of his own men reinforced by a rabble rout of
Berber tribesmen, he harassed the Christian army; they were, however, in
far too great numbers for him to make any impression, and after several
desperate skirmishes he recognised that the day was lost, and re-embarking
in his galleys sailed away. The town after a desperate and prolonged
resistance was at last taken by storm; and Doria captured Aisa, a Turkish
alcaid, and ten thousand prisoners of the baser sort. Of these, however,
there was scarce one who owed allegiance to Dragut; the warriors of this
chief neither gave nor accepted quarter, as they feared the wrath of the
terrible corsair even more than death itself.

Don Juan de Vega put his son Don Alvaro in command of the city and set out
in search of Dragut with twenty galleys, but the sea leaves no traces by
which a fugitive can be tracked, and his search proved as fruitless as had
been that of Doria in the previous year. The rage and the disappointment of
the admiral were beyond all bounds; what to him was the value of the
capture of Aisa, of the Turkish al