The inhabitants of the doomed city never saw their assailants until they were actually upon them, so well had the surprise attack been planned by the leader of the corsairs.  He had collected five hundred men, and this was but a small number with which to assail so strong a place; but Dragut knew exactly what he was doing and the effect likely to be produced by the introduction of this number of highly trained men-at-arms among a population which, although brave and warlike, lacked the elements of organisation for the defence of their city.

So it was that, all preparations being completed, he stood along the coast anchoring out of sight of his objective, but close enough to reach it by midnight after darkness had fallen.  He had every confidence in himself, an absolute trust in the hardbitten fighters whom he was about to lead; success or failure now rested in the hands of traitors within the city.

“Faith unfaithful kept them falsely true,” for when Dragut and his followers arrived at a certain rendezvous outside the walls which had been agreed upon previously, there they found Ibrahim Amburac and his men ready to assist them in scaling this obstacle.  It will be remembered that Ibrahim Amburac was personally in charge of one of the towers with which the walls were guarded, and thus his task of aiding those who came from without was a singularly easy one.  But even at midnight the passage of five hundred men could not remain long undiscovered as they clambered in over the walls.  Soon an alarm was raised and the “Africans” rushed to arms and hurried to the quarter from which danger threatened.  The townsmen were well armed and brave, also they were numerous; but it was the old story of the break-up of undisciplined valour by highly organised attack.

In the choking heat of the African night townsmen and corsairs wrestled in deadly conflict hand to hand and foot to foot; but these untrained landsmen stood but a poor chance against the picked fighting men of the Moslem galleys who had been inured to bloodshed from their earliest youth and trained by such a master in the art of war as Dragut.  That warrior, his great curved scimitar red to the hilt, the blood dripping from a gash in his cheek, his clothing torn and in disarray, followed by a gigantic negro bearing a flaming torch, was ever in the thickest of the fray.  Behind him his lieutenants Othman and Selim strove to emulate his prowess, while all around surged his devoted band of fanatics.

“Allah!  Allah!” and “Dragut!  Dragut!” pealed the war-cry of the corsairs; foot by foot and yard by yard that spearhead of dauntless dare-devils pressed onwards into the packed masses of the “Africans,” who, fighting stubbornly, nevertheless were borne back by the fury of the terrible onslaught.  Torch-bearers among the pirates leaped into houses and set them ablaze, the flames volleyed and crackled, the dense smoke rolled upwards to the stainless sky, the night was a hell of blood and fire.