Dragut, like all the sea-wolves, was fond of money, fonder still of what money could buy; he now hankered after revenge as the sweetest morsel that his hoarded ducats could procure for him.  That the Sultan was well disposed to him he had every reason to think; none the less did he spend royally among the venal favourites of the Court in order that nothing might be left undone to inflame the ardour of Soliman against those whom he considered to be his hereditary foes.

With such skill and address did the corsair manage his suit that he prevailed upon the Sultan to address a letter to Charles demanding the immediate return of the towns of Susa, Sfax, Monastir, and “Africa.”  This, of course, meant war; as Charles immediately replied that these places were dependencies of the King of Tunis, and that that ruler was under his special protection; further that they were his by right of conquest; finally that the matter was no concern whatever of the Sultan of Constantinople.  The stern and imperious Christian Emperor was in no mood to brook interference, the more so that he discerned plainly that though the demand was that of Soliman, the mover in the affair was none other than Dragut.  He therefore by way of a rider to his answer to the Sultan informed that monarch that these places which he had taken on the coast of Africa had been reft by him “from one Dragut, a corsair odious to both God and man”; that without in any way departing from the treaty which he had made with Soliman “he intended to pursue this pirate whithersoever he might go.”

Whether or no this denunciation of Dragut had any influence on the Sultan it is impossible to say; he was in the habit of employing the corsairs, and apparently cared nothing about their piratical reputation, so long as their depredations were confined to Christian vessels.  Shortly after the receipt of the answer of Charles, however, the Sultan conferred upon Dragut the title of Sandjak or governor of the island of Santa Maura, thus constituting him a Turkish official.

Once again was Andrea Doria ordered to put to sea to fight against neither small nor great save Dragut alone; he was to take him dead or alive, but alive for choice, in order that he might be made to answer at the bar of Christian justice for all the atrocities committed by him both by land and sea.  The corsair had returned in the meanwhile to Jerbah, an island on the east coast of Tunis much affected by the sea-wolves, and which in contemporary histories is known as Jerbah, as Los Gelues (by the Spanish writers), as Gelves, and various other names which greatly confuse its identity.