his fate. Hesitation at this moment, when, in the
fulness of time, the rivals stood face to face with arms in their hands,
was the last thing that would have been expected of such dauntless
warriors, such born leaders of men! and the battle of Prevesa presents a
psychological problem of the most baffling and perplexing description. We
are, however, anticipating events which will fall into their proper
sequence as we proceed.

Kheyr-ed-Din, now firmly established in Algiers, devoted his energies to
the undoing of his Christian foes by the systematic plunder of their
merchant-vessels. At this period he, personally, seems to have remained
ashore, and sent his young and aspiring captains to sea to increase his
wealth by plunder, his consequence by the hordes of slaves which they swept
into the awful bagnios of Algiers; and Sandoval, that quaint and delightful
historian, is moved to indignation and complains with much acrimony of "las
malas obras que este corsario hizo a la Christiandad" (the evil deeds done
to Christianity by this corsair). These were on so considerable a scale at
this time that he had to devote to them far more space than he considered
consonant with the dignity of history.

But if all were going on well on the coast of Africa for the Crescent, such
was far from being the case in the northern waters of the Mediterranean;
for Andrea Doria, serving His Most Catholic Majesty at sea, had defeated
the Turks at Patras and again in the Dardanelles, which unpleasant fact
caused no little annoyance to Soliman the Magnificent. On land the Sultan
was sweeping all before him; at sea this pestilent Genoese was dragging
into servitude all the best mariners who sailed beneath the banner of the
Prophet. There was wrath and there was fear at Constantinople, and the
captains of the galleys which sailed from the Golden Horn felt that their
heads and their bodies might at any moment part company--the Grand Turk was
in an ill humour, which might at any moment call for the appeasement of
sacrifice; so it was that men trembled.

It was at this time, in 1533, that Soliman bethought himself of
Kheyr-ed-Din. There was no better seaman, there was no fiercer fighter,
there was no man whose name was so renowned throughout the length and
breadth of the Mediterranean, than was that of the corsair king who was
vassal to the Sublime Porte. Soliman was confronted with a new, and, to
him, an almost mysterious thing, for the onward conquer