At last, on September 5th, the Imperial fleet hove in sight.  It was composed of forty-nine galleys, but these were supplemented by a great number of sailing ships; the sailing craft, however, did not arrive till September 22nd.  These vessels were gradually making way among the Spaniards since the discovery of the new world.

At this time the Venetians possessed fourteen nefs.  Doria had augmented these by twenty-two of his own, and the total number of thirty-six was commanded by Franco Doria, a nephew of the admiral.  The Venetian nefs were commanded by Alessandro Condalmiero, captain of the Galleon of Venice.  This was the most formidable fighting vessel in the Mediterranean; she was reckoned an excellent sailor, she was by far the most heavily armed sailing ship then afloat; in fact, in the opinion of contemporary seamen, she was “an invincible fortress.”

Doria, Grimani, and Capello had now nearly 200 ships carrying nearly 60,000 men.  Such a force, in all ages, has been considered great.  William the Conqueror conquered Britain with a less number; it is almost half the total of the personnel of the British fleet in the present day which has to defend a country with 40,000,000 inhabitants, and all this force had been raised, armed, and equipped to combat with a Moslem corsair.

Barbarossa had succeeded in assembling 122 ships.  He was accompanied by all the most famous corsairs of the day, among whom was Dragut, who fell at the siege of Malta, and of whom we shall have more to say in due time.  Far and wide ranged the swift galleys of the Ottoman fleet, for the plan of the commander of the Moslems was to locate and destroy his enemies in detail if possible.  At last news came to him that Grimani’s ships had been sighted in the Gulf of Arta.  Not one moment did he lose; he would fall upon the Papal contingent with his whole force and destroy it utterly.  Such, at least, was his plan when he sailed for Prevesa; but, notwithstanding his haste, he was too late.  Happily for himself, Grimani had returned to Corfu before the arrival of his enemy.

At this juncture Barbarossa hesitated; had he not done so, and had he followed Grimani to Corfu, he might have destroyed both him and Vincenzo Capello in detail before the arrival of Doria.  The Prevesa campaign is a curious study of hesitation on both sides, and the idea naturally occurs were not the corsair and the Christian commanders-in-chief too old for the work on which they were engaged?  Men of over seventy are not impetuous, but grave and deliberate as a rule; but there is no rule without its exceptions, and Doria and Barbarossa were not as other leaders.  Up to the present their dash and initiative had been unimpaired.  There was no question that Barbarossa not only made a mistake in hesitating, but that by it he lost the game.  Instead of striking at once he did what he had never done before in the whole of his career, which was to send to Constantinople