vessels were part of the
Armada; upon which he rowed boldly into Port Mahon, seized a rich
Portuguese galleon, sacked the town, and, laden with six thousand
captives and much booty and ammunition, led his prize back in triumph
to Algiers. In the meanwhile Doria was assiduously hunting for him
with thirty galleys, under the emperor's express orders to catch him
dead or alive. The great Genoese had to wait yet three years for his
long-sought duel.

Having accomplished its object, the Armada, as usual, broke up without
making a decisive end of the Corsairs. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n, waiting at
Algiers in expectation of attack, heard the news gladly, and, when the
coast was clear, sailed back to Constantinople for reinforcements. He
never saw Algiers again.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] Von Hammer, _Gesch. d. Osm. Reiches_, ii. 129.

[30] Broadley, _Tunis, Past and Present_, i. 42, quoting a narrative by
Boyssat, one of the Knights of Malta, written in 1612.

[31] On Charles's expedition to Tunis, consult Marmol, H[=a]jji
Khal[=i]fa, Robertson, Morgan, Von Hammer, and Broadley. In the last
will be found some interesting photographs of Jan Cornelis Vermeyen's
pictures, painted on the spot during the progress of the siege, by
command of the Emperor, and now preserved at Windsor. All the accounts
of the siege and capture show discrepancies which it seems hopeless to
reconcile.

[32] _Hist. of Algiers_, 286.

IX.

THE SEA-FIGHT OFF PREVESA.

1537.

When Barbarossa returned to Constantinople Tunis was forgotten and
Minorca alone called to mind: instead of the title of Beglerbeg of
Algiers, the Sultan saluted him as Capudan Pasha or High Admiral of
the Ottoman fleets. There was work to be done in the Adriatic, and
none was fitter to do it than the great Corsair. Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n had
acquired an added influence at Stambol since the execution of the
Grand Vez[=i]r Ibrah[=i]m,[33] and he used it in exactly the opposite
direction. Ibrah[=i]m, a Dalmatian by birth, had always striven to
maintain friendly relations with Venice, his native state, and for
more than thirty years there had been peace between the Republic and
the Porte. Barbarossa, on the contrary, longed to pit his galleys
against the most famous of the maritime nations of the Middle Ages,
and to make the Crescent as supreme in the waters of the Adriatic as
it was in the Aegean. Francis I. was careful to support this policy
out of his jealousy of the Empire. The Venetia