ch they engaged,
they were frequently, as we have seen in the course of this story, largely
dependent upon auxiliaries in whom no trust could be placed; and at
Prevesa, at the siege of Malta, and later on at the battle of Lepanto, the
spot on which they fought, were it on the land or on the sea, was ever the
one which formed the nucleus of resistance. It was not only that fighting
was their particular trade; that, of course, might be said also of any man
who trailed a pike or carried an arquebus and marched in the ranks of
Spain, France, Genoa, or Venice. In the case of the sea-wolves it was the
perpetual practice in the art of war, as it was then understood, that
caused them to be the men that they were. Much of their fighting could
hardly be dignified by such a name, as in their everlasting raids on
villages and undefended places they seldom lost many of their number: when,
however, it came to the real thing, as it did on the occasion we have just
recounted, the long years of training told, and opposition had to be strong
indeed if it were not to be beaten down by such a leader as Dragut, by such
men as his picked five hundred.

What passed between Dragut and the council of "Africa," who in so
unqualified a manner had refused that warrior as a citizen, is not on
record; all that we know is that the Moslem leader dispensed with their
services, and did not invite his new fellow-townsmen to share with him the
burden of government. There was hurry in the administration of the corsair
states, as the form of rule which they adopted was apt to irk the rulers in
Christendom. In this particular instance Dragut, having expelled the
Spaniards from the coast towns, knew that a reckoning with the Emperor and
his militant admiral, Andrea Doria, was but a matter of time, and, in all
probability, of a very short time.

Promptly, hurriedly, but efficiently, the corsair organised his new
possession: such laws as he decreed did not err on the side of tenderness
towards a people so ungrateful as to have refused his protection in the
first instance, and who had only accepted the gift at the point of the
sword. His nephew Aisa, a man young in years but a past-graduate in the
school of his terrible uncle, was left in charge, while Dragut himself
sailed once more with his fleet, for, as it is put by the Spanish historian
Marmol, "truly the sea was his element."

Once again had a Moslem corsair bid defiance to that ruler whom Sandoval
and M