within range was most furiously bombarded.  This served to amuse Andrea Doria, who, confident that the jaws of the trap had closed, kept a sharp look-out for vessels issuing from the harbour, but otherwise concerned himself not at all about the entrenchments.  Was not Naples humming with the note of preparation?  Would not the Genoese come in their thousands to the summons of their renowned chieftain?  Could not the Viceroy of Sicily be trusted to work his best to gain the favour of his Imperial master?

“Time and I are two” was the favourite expression of King Philip II. of Spain; the same idea might have crossed the mind of Doria on this memorable occasion.  He had only to wait; the longer he waited the more secure he would be of success, the more certain would he be of the complete undoing of his enemy.  But even yet the admiral did not know the man to whom he was opposed; in all the years in which he had done battle against Dragut, he had never gauged the limitless resource and calculated audacity of this lineal successor of Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa.  While the admiral had been sending his despatches, and idly watching that which he considered to be the futile construction of earthworks on the shore at the Bocca de Cantara, his enemy was preparing for him that surprise which was shortly afterwards to make of him the laughing-stock of the whole of Europe.  Dragut was in a trap, and he was quite aware of the fact; by way of the Bocca de Cantara escape was impossible, and neither a tame surrender nor complete annihilation was by any means to the taste of the pirate leader.  Had Doria gone in and attacked at once, the fate of the corsair had been sealed; the policy of delay adopted by the Christian admiral was his salvation.

A man less able, less determined, than Dragut, might well have despaired; but he brought to bear on the problem with which he was confronted all the subtlety of his nature, all the resourcefulness of the born seaman that he was.  His mind had been made up from the very beginning:  the earthworks at the Bocca de Cantara, the movements of troops, the furious cannonading, had all been nothing but a blind to hide the real design which he had in view.  In addition to his fighting men he had at his command some two thousand islanders, stout Mohammedans to a man, ready and willing to assist him in his design of cheating the Christians of their prey.  Day and night, with ceaseless silent toil, had garrison and islanders been at work on the scheme which the leader had devised.  From the head of the harbour Dragut had caused a road to be made right across the island to the sea on the opposite side:  on this road he caused planks to be laid, bolted to sleepers and then thickly greased.  The vessels of the day were of course comparatively speaking light, and capable of being manhandled, supposing that you had sufficient hands.  At dead of night Dragut assembled his forces, and before morning every galley, galeasse, and brigantine had been dragged across the island and launched in the sea on the opposite side.  There was then nothing left to do but to embark stores, guns, and ammunition and to sail quietly away, and this was what happened.  Once again Dragut faded away beyond the skyline, “leaving Andrea Doria with the dog to hold,” in the quaint language of the chronicler of these events, Don Luys de Marmol Caravajal.