at country the puppet King Muley Hassan, and although he was to
rescue some twenty thousand Christian captives, he did not capture
Barbarossa, who was to live for many years to continue and to carry on his
unceasing war against the Christians.

There was no artifice left untried by the despot of Tunis. To the African
princes, Moors as well as Arabs and Berbers, did Kheyr-ed-Din send
embassies. For these he chose cunning men well versed in the means of
exciting the furious passions of these primitive and ferocious peoples, and
it was their mission to represent Muley Hassan as an infamous apostate who
was prompted by ambition and revenge, not only to become the vassal of a
Christian king, but to conspire with him to extirpate the Mohammedan faith.
The subtle policy inflamed these ignorant and bigoted Mohammedans to the
point of madness, and from far and near they threw in their lot with the
man who represented himself to be the rallying-point for all those in
Africa who desired not only to preserve their holy religion but also their
personal liberty. From Tripoli and Jerba, from Bougie and Bona, from the
shores of Shott-el-Jerid, through all the dim hinterland that stretches
from thence north-westwards to Algiers, the tribesmen came flocking in. The
wild riders of the desert had been rounded up, and it is said that no less
than twenty thousand horsemen, in addition to an innumerable crowd of
infantry, responded to the call of the master schemer who was but using
these guileless savages to further his own personal ends. The land-pirates
of the desert, those stormy petrels whose lives only differed from those of
the followers of Kheyr-ed-Din in that they carried on their depredations on
the land instead of on the sea, camped in their thousands in the environs
of Tunis and boasted of the deeds which they were about to perform.
Kheyr-ed-Din stimulated their enthusiasm with presents of the most costly
description. Ever wise and politic, he knew when it was necessary to pay
royally, and on this occasion surpassed himself in prodigality. For all
this he himself cherished no illusions; he had the measure of the fighting
men of his foes at his fingers' ends, and the most that he expected from
these wild irregulars was that they might, perchance, stay an onset and
worry the imperial army with dashing cavalry raids. But that they should
hold their own with the incomparable infantry of Spain, or make head
against the stolid valour of t