orsair
had taken the very first opportunity which presented itself grossly to
insult these men. It is true, as we shall see, that his injurious words
came home to roost in the future; but arrogant, conquering, contemptuous,
Barbarossa seems to have shouldered his way through life, fearing none and
feared by all.

The fact of his known cruelty accounts for much of the dread which he
inspired, but it was something far more than this which caused the son of
the Albanian renegado to ride roughshod as he did over all with whom he was
brought into contact. Men felt, in dealing with Barbarossa, that here was a
rock against which they might dash themselves in vain. In all his
enterprises he spared not himself. He asked no man to do that which he was
not prepared to do, but if any failed him there was no mercy for that man;
and, although in deference to modern susceptibility no mention is made of
the tortures he so frequently caused to be inflicted on his victims, they
were none the less a daily spectacle to those who lived under his rule. He
possessed, it is true, the rough geniality of the fighting man, a certain
"Hail fellow, well met!" manner in greeting old comrades, and yet none of
these men there were who did not tremble in an agony of fear when the bushy
brows were bent, when the famous red beard bristled in one of his
uncontrollable furies. The real secret of his success must have been that,
no matter how uncontrollable did his passions appear to be, the man was
always really master of himself. Further, he possessed a marvellous insight
as to where his own interests lay. He used as his tools the bodies and the
minds of the men who were subject to him, and he carried his designs to an
assured success by the aid of that penetrating, far-seeing mental power
with which, above all else, he must have been gifted. He could drive men,
he could lead them, he could invariably persuade when all else failed him.
In this we have had an instance when he was chased from Algiers by the
combined efforts of Venalcadi and Hassan, whom he had flogged; for no
sooner did he meet with other corsairs than he persuaded them to take up
his quarrel--which, it must be understood, was none of theirs--and to
replace him on that precarious throne from which he had been so rudely
thrust. We have already said that he was a man who never knew when he was
beaten, and in the years which we have yet to chronicle this characteristic
appears again and again;