them to rise to eminence.  Into the fierce and blood-stained turmoil of their lives there entered something unknown to any other pirates:  this was religious fanaticism—­a fanaticism so engrained in character, a belief held to with such passionate tenacity, that men stained with every conceivable crime held that their passage to Paradise was absolutely secure because of the faith which they professed.  Tradition, sentiment, discipline, were summed up in one trite formula; but though we, at this distance of time, may hold it somewhat in derision, it was a vital force in the days of Soliman the Magnificent; and there was an added zest to robbery and murder in the fact that the pirates, as good Mohammedans, were obeying the behests of the Prophet every time that they cut a Christian throat, plundered a Christian argosy, or carried off shrieking women into a captivity far worse than death.

That a pirate should be a warrior goes without saying, that a pirate should be a statesman is a thing almost incredible; but those who will read the story of the life of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa will be forced to admit that here, at least, was a pirate who achieved the apparently impossible.  Admiral Jurien de la Graviere has remarked that the Moslem corsairs of the sixteenth century were great men, even when measured by the standard of Henry VIII., of Charles V., of Soliman the Magnificent, of Ibrahim, his Grand Vizier, or of Andrea Doria, greatest among contemporary Christian mariners.  To the seaman, of course, there is much that is fascinating in the deeds of his forerunners, and the ships of the corsairs had in them something distinctive in that they were propelled by oars, and were in consequence, to a certain extent, independent of the weather.  Like the sailors of all ages, to the Sea-wolves gales and storms of all sorts and descriptions were abhorrent; and in consequence they had a well-marked piracy season, which, as we shall see, covered the spring and summer, while they carefully avoided the inclement months of autumn and winter.

In a later chapter an attempt has been made to place before the reader pictures of the galley, the galeasse, and the nef, which were the names attached to the ships then in use; the name brigantine, far from having the significance attached to it by the sailor of the present day, seems to have been a generic term to denote any craft not included in the names already given.

Although the sixteenth century had outgrown the principle of the general massacre of the enemy by the victors, still chivalry to the fallen foe was far to seek, as all persons captured at sea were, no matter what their rank and status, immediately stripped and chained to the rowers’ bench, where they remained until ransom, good fortune, or a kindly death, for which these unfortunates were wont to pray, should come to their release.  To a large extent this savagery may be traced to the religious rancour which animated the combatants on both sides, as the fanaticism of