istendom that which had been reft from them in the near past in the
kingdoms of Cordova and Granada. But who shall find excuse for the
Christian kings, governors, and princes at this epoch? They sought their
prey no less ravenously than did the pirates, and with just about the same
amount of justification: witness the sacking of Rome by Charles V. in 1527,
and the unexampled act of treachery just recorded of Francis of France.

Kheyr-ed-Din had lived all his turbulent life among wars and rumours of
wars: the head of the tiller, the hilt of the scimitar, the butt of the
arquebus, had been in his hand since early youth; bloodshed and strife were
the atmosphere in which he lived and breathed. Desperate adventures by land
and sea had been his ever since he could remember; there was no hazard that
he had not run, no peril which he had not dared. But now even he, the
veteran of far more than one hundred fights, was grave and preoccupied when
he considered the greatness, the imminence of his peril. The "Clerigo
Francese" had put him in possession of the fact that Carlos Quinto was
exerting all his strength for the combat which was to come; and Barbarossa
was far too old a fighter, far too wise a warrior, to underrate by one
soldier or by one galley the forces that the Emperor could put into line
against him; from far and near his foes were gathering for his destruction,
and he did not deceive himself in the least as to what the fate of his
followers and himself would be should the Christian hosts be victorious.

But, nevertheless, such an emergency as this found the man at his best:
ready to take fortune at the flood when she smiled upon him, he was perhaps
at his very greatest in adversity; and when all around him trembled and
paid one of their infrequent visits to the Mosque to implore the aid of the
Prophet, the veteran corsair was coolly reviewing the situation, seeking a
way to weather the tempest before which lesser men shrank appalled,
declaring that the end had come. The storm was coming in a squall of such
violence as even he had never before experienced, but, thanks to his friend
the King of France, he had been forewarned. He sent at once to his master,
Soliman the Magnificent, at Constantinople, to impart to him the direful
intelligence; then the bagnios were thrown open, and, under pitiless lash
and scourge, the Christian captives toiled from dawn till dark to repair
the fortifications of Tunis. Silent and unapproach