There was a sharp order repeated and passed on, the corsairs drew back, and the “Africans” shouted that the triumph was theirs; but they little knew Dragut, the sea-hawk who poised to strike anew.  A blazing beam dropped across the street, the townsfolk shouted in insult and derision; but the joy which they had experienced at seeing their adversaries recoil was but a short and fleeting emotion.  Giving himself and those who had hitherto been engaged time to breathe and recover themselves, Dragut waited while the noise of the strife died down, and nought was heard but the roar of the flames and the crash of the burning buildings.

The leader turned to his followers, among whom dwelt an ominous silence.  “Dost remember Prevesa,” he cried, “when Andrea Doria and the best of the Christian warriors fled before you like sheep before a dog:  are these miserable townsmen to stay your onward march?”

There remained for an appreciable period after he had spoken a tense silence; the red light from the burning houses shone on the lean faces alight with the fierce fire of fanaticism, with an inextinguishable lust of slaughter.  There came an answering frenetic roar, “Lead!  Lead!  Dragut!  Dragut!  Dragut!” It was enough:  the corsair had tried the temper of the steel, he had now but to use the edge.  There was an ordered movement on the part of the pirates:  a fresh hundred men, who had hitherto taken no part in the combat, now pressed to the front and formed the advance, those who had been before engaged now forming the supports; that which had been the shaft of the spear now forming its head.  With Dragut leading, these fresh unwounded men swept forward over the burning beam; irresistible as some mighty river in spate, these disciplined ruffians, headed by this master spirit, burst through the ill-organised resistance opposed to them, and slew and slew and slew.

Behind them, alert and wary, came the supports, asking no quarter and giving none, cutting up the wounded, trampling under foot friend and foe alike who fell in the weltering shambles which marked the onward path of their leader and the advanced party.  Very soon the broken hosts of the “Africans” cried piteously for mercy; the fight was over, and Dragut-Reis, wounded, breathless, but victorious, stood master of the strongest place of arms in all the continent of Africa.  It is true that treachery had given him his opportunity, but once that was obtained the rest he had done for himself:  the stealthy advance by sea, the midnight march to the exact spot on the walls where he was awaited by Ibrahim Amburac, the marshalling of his five hundred for the conflict, and the actual conduct of the fight itself, were all to the credit of this apt pupil of the great Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa, As warriors his followers were worthy of their leader:  defeated the corsairs frequently were, but, in the combats in which they engaged, they were frequently, as we have seen in the course of this