de's success
with the people of J[=i]jil, had induced the Shersh[=e]l rovers to
accept him as their leader. Ur[=u]j had no liking for two Kings of
Brentford, and took off Black Hasan's head as a friendly precaution,
before exposing himself to the perils of another contest with the
Spaniards.

Soon he was at Algiers, hospitably lodged and entertained, he and all
his men, Turks and J[=i]jilis alike, by Sheykh Salim and the people of
the town. There, at the distance of a crossbow-shot, stood the
fortress he had come to reduce, and thither he sent a message offering
a safe conduct to the garrison if they would surrender. The Spanish
captain made reply that "neither threats nor proffered curtesies
availed aught with men of his kidney," and told him to remember
Buj[=e]ya. Upon which Ur[=u]j, more to please his unsuspicious hosts
than with much prospect of success, battered the Penon for twenty days
with his light field-pieces, without making any sensible breach in the
defences.

Meanwhile, the Arabs and Moors who had called him to their aid were
becoming aware of their mistake. Instead of getting rid of their old
enemy the Spaniard, they had imported a second, worse than the first,
and Ur[=u]j soon showed them who was to be master. He and his Turks
treated the ancient Moorish families, who had welcomed them within
their gates, with an insolence that was hard to be borne by
descendants of the Abencerrages and other noble houses of Granada.
Salim, the Arab Sheykh, was the first to feel the despot's power: he
was murdered in his bath--it was said by the Corsair himself. In their
alarm, the Algerines secretly made common cause with the soldiers of
the Penon, and a general rising was planned; but one day at Friday
prayers Barbarossa let the crowded congregation know that their
designs were not unsuspected. Shutting the gates, the Turks bound
their entertainers with the turbans off their heads, and the immediate
decapitation of the ringleaders at the mosque door quelled the spirit
of revolt. Nor was a great Armada, sent by Cardinal Ximenes, and
commanded by Don Diego de Vera, more successful than the Algerine
rebellion. Seven thousand Spaniards were utterly routed by the Turks
and Arabs; and to complete the discomfiture of the Christians a
violent tempest drove their ships ashore, insomuch that this mighty
expedition was all but annihilate.

An adventurer who, with a motley following of untrained bandits and
nomads, could over