o feed
and pay these rapacious allies was a task that went near to ruining
the finances of France.

The French were not satisfied of the Corsair's fidelity, and it must
be added that the Emperor might have had some reason to doubt the
honesty of Doria. The two greatest admirals of the age were both in
the Western Mediterranean, but nothing could tempt them to come to
blows. The truth was that each had a great reputation to lose, and
each preferred to go to his grave with all his fame undimmed. Francis
I. had a suspicion that Barbarossa was meditating the surrender of
Toulon to the Emperor, and, improbable as it was, some colour was
given to the King's anxiety by the amicable relations which seemed to
subsist between the Genoese Corsair and his Barbary rival. Doria gave
up the captive Dragut to his old captain for a ransom of three
thousand gold crowns--a transaction on which he afterwards looked back
with unqualified regret. The situation was growing daily more
unpleasant for France. From his easy position in Toulon, Barbarossa
sent forth squadrons under S[=a]lih Reis and other commanders to lay
waste the coasts of Spain, while he remained "lazily engaged in
emptying the coffers of the French king."

At last they got rid of him. Francis was compelled to furnish the pay
and rations of the whole crews and troops of the Ottoman fleet up to
their re-entry into the Bosphorus; he had to free four hundred
Mohammedan galley slaves and deliver them to Barbarossa; he loaded him
with jewellery, silks, and other presents; the Corsair departed in a
Corsair's style, weighed down with spoil. His homeward voyage was one
long harrying of the Italian coasts; his galley sailed low with human
freight; and his arrival at Constantinople was the signal for the
filling of all the harems of the great pashas with beautiful captives.
Barbarossa, laden with such gifts, was sure of his welcome.

Two years later he died, in July, 1546, an old man of perhaps near
ninety, yet without surviving his great fame. "Valorous yet prudent,
furious in attack, foreseeing in preparation," he ranks as the first
sea captain of his time. "The chief of the sea is dead," expressed in
three Arabic words, gives the numerical value 953, the year of the
Hijra in which Kheyr-ed-d[=i]n Barbarossa died.

Long afterwards no Turkish fleet left the Golden Horn without her crew
repeating a prayer and firing a salute over the tomb at Beshiktash,
where lie the bones of the f