.

A great procession was formed of Christian captives marching two and two.
Four young Christian girls were mounted on mules, and two ladies of noble
birth followed on Arab horses sumptuously caparisoned. These unfortunates
were destined for the harems of their captors. The Sultan was greatly
pleased at the spectacle, and as the mournful procession defiled before him
cried out, "See how heaven recompenses the brave!" Jurien de la Graviere
remarks: "Such was the fortune of war in the sixteenth century. A man
leaving Naples to go to Spain might end his days in a Moorish bagnio and
see his wife and daughters fall a prey to miscreants of the worse
description."

It was not till the following spring that Uruj was fit once more to pursue
his chosen calling, so severe had been his wounds; but once he was whole
and sound again he put to sea accompanied by Kheyr-ed-Din, and this time he
had conceived a singularly bold and desperate enterprise. Two years before
the famous Spanish captain, Pedro de Navarro, had seized upon the coast
town of Bougie, and had unfortunately left it in the hands of a totally
insufficient garrison. This departure from the sound rules of warfare had
already been punished as it deserved, as the garrison was perpetually
harassed and annoyed by the surrounding Arab tribes. The idea of Uruj was
to seize upon Bougie by a _coup de main_. The corsair, however, was a far
finer fighter than he was a strategist, and was possessed of a most
impatient temper. All went well to begin with, as he managed to intercept
and to capture a convoy of Spanish ships sent to revictual the place, and
had he been content to wait he might have counted with certainty on
reducing the garrison by starvation, as it depended on this very convoy for
its supplies. In vain the wary and cool-headed Kheyr-ed-Din counselled
prudence and delay, but these words were not to be found in the vocabulary
of his elder brother. "What had to be done," he replied, "had better be
done at once," and at the head of only fifty men landed and assaulted the
still uncompleted ramparts of Bougie.

But if Uruj were rash and headstrong, so was not the commander of the
Spanish garrison, who, massing his men for the repulse of the assault,
waited till the last moment, and then received them with a volley of
arquebuses, which laid many of them low, and so badly wounded their leader
that he had to have his arm amputated on the spot: it says much for his
constituti