comparable in the world as it then existed; on all this the Moslem had now to turn his back, and to earn a precarious living by the strong hand.  War, sanguinary and incessant, was henceforward to be his lot, and it must be said that he turned to this ancient avocation with a zest which left but little to be desired from the point of view of those by whom he was led.  In the new life of bloodshed and adventure he seemed to delight.  Like the free-lance in all ages, he seems to have squandered his booty as soon as it was acquired, and then to sea once more, to face the desperate hazard of an encounter with the knights, to raid defenceless villages, to lie perdu behind some convenient cape, dashing out from thence to plunder the argosy of the merchantman.  Intolerable conditions of heat and cold he endured, he suffered from wounds, from fever, from hunger and thirst, from hope deferred, from voyages when no plunder came his way.

His reward was the joy of the fight, the delight of the ambush skilfully laid, to see the decks of the enemy a dreadful shambles, with the Crescent of the Prophet above the detested emblem of the Cross.  Then the return to Algiers laden with spoil:  to tow behind him some luckless Christian ship, while aboard his own war-worn galley the drums beat and the trumpets sounded, and the banners floated free to the stainless Mediterranean sky.  Then the procession of the captives through the crowded streets laden with what a short time before had been their own property—­a mournful cortege of men doomed to an everlasting slavery and of women destined for the harems of the Bashas.

Thus was his life lived, and when death came it came as a rule from the slash of a sabre or the ball from an arquebus or a bombard; and then what matter, for had not Hassan Ali or Selim fallen in strife against the enemies of his faith, and did not the portals of heaven open wide to receive the man who had lost his life testifying to the fact that there was but one God, and that Mahomet was the Prophet of God?

True in substance and in fact is that which was said by the Frere Pierre d’An that “it is indisputable that the sea is the Theatre of the storms and the place in the world most capable of all sorts of violence and tragic adventure.”  Those who “coveted the goods of others straying on the sea,” called by the reverend brother “the implacable, corsairs of Barbary,” were to make life intolerable on that element for centuries to come, and if the Crescent did not supersede the banner of the Cross in the blue waters of the Mediterranean Sea, it remained as a portent and a dread symbol of human misery and unutterable suffering.

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF THE CORSAIRS

The rise and progress of the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean is a most curious and interesting historical fact.  The causes which led to results so deplorable to commerce, civilisation, and Christianity are set forth in this chapter in order that some idea may be formed of the state of affairs in that region at the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries, and also that the reflex action of the great triumph of the Christian armies in Spain may be more fully understood.