story, largely dependent upon auxiliaries in whom no trust could be placed; and at Prevesa, at the siege of Malta, and later on at the battle of Lepanto, the spot on which they fought, were it on the land or on the sea, was ever the one which formed the nucleus of resistance.  It was not only that fighting was their particular trade; that, of course, might be said also of any man who trailed a pike or carried an arquebus and marched in the ranks of Spain, France, Genoa, or Venice.  In the case of the sea-wolves it was the perpetual practice in the art of war, as it was then understood, that caused them to be the men that they were.  Much of their fighting could hardly be dignified by such a name, as in their everlasting raids on villages and undefended places they seldom lost many of their number:  when, however, it came to the real thing, as it did on the occasion we have just recounted, the long years of training told, and opposition had to be strong indeed if it were not to be beaten down by such a leader as Dragut, by such men as his picked five hundred.

What passed between Dragut and the council of “Africa,” who in so unqualified a manner had refused that warrior as a citizen, is not on record; all that we know is that the Moslem leader dispensed with their services, and did not invite his new fellow-townsmen to share with him the burden of government.  There was hurry in the administration of the corsair states, as the form of rule which they adopted was apt to irk the rulers in Christendom.  In this particular instance Dragut, having expelled the Spaniards from the coast towns, knew that a reckoning with the Emperor and his militant admiral, Andrea Doria, was but a matter of time, and, in all probability, of a very short time.

Promptly, hurriedly, but efficiently, the corsair organised his new possession:  such laws as he decreed did not err on the side of tenderness towards a people so ungrateful as to have refused his protection in the first instance, and who had only accepted the gift at the point of the sword.  His nephew Aisa, a man young in years but a past-graduate in the school of his terrible uncle, was left in charge, while Dragut himself sailed once more with his fleet, for, as it is put by the Spanish historian Marmol, “truly the sea was his element.”

Once again had a Moslem corsair bid defiance to that ruler whom Sandoval and Marmol in their histories greet by the name of the “Modern Caesar.”  It was told to Charles that Susa, Sfax, and Monastir had fallen, that “Africa” was in the hands of the corsairs; “was he never to be free from these pestilent knaves,” he demanded of his trembling courtiers?  Hot-foot came the couriers from Charles to Andrea Doria, with orders to take Dragut dead or alive, but alive for choice; and up and down the tideless sea in the summer of 1549 did the great Genoese seaman range in search of the bold corsair.  Doria was getting a very old man now, but his eye was undimmed, his strength yet tireless, his vigilance and zeal in the service of his master unabated.