hair, and frantic gestures, demanded the instant despatch of an expedition to utterly exterminate these barbarian corsairs, the Knights of Malta, who had thus injured them and lacerated their tenderest susceptibilities.  The Grand Turk, autocrat as he was, had no peace day or night; he was surrounded by wailing women and sullen officials, all of whom had lost heavily by the capture of the puissant galleon.  The Imaum, or preacher in the principal mosque, called upon the Sultan in his discourse to fall upon the audacious infidel and smite him hip and thigh.  He reminded the Padishah that, in the dungeons of the Knights, true believers were languishing; that on the rowers’ benches of the galleys of “the Religion” Moslems were being flogged like dogs.  In a furious peroration he concluded:  “It is only thy invincible sword which can shatter the chains of these unfortunates, whose cries are rising to heaven and afflicting the ears of the Prophet of God:  the son is demanding his father, the wife her husband and her children.  All, therefore, wait upon thee, upon thy justice, and thy power, for vengeance upon their cruel and implacable enemies.”

Contrary to all precedent, which enjoins the most perfect silence in the mosque, these bold utterances were received with something more than murmurs of applause:  never in all his long and glorious reign had the great and magnificent despot heard so plainly the voice of his people.  Apart, however, from eunuchs, women, and Mullahs, Soliman had long been importuned by Dragut to take the course which was now being urged upon him with so much insistence.  There was at this time no warrior in all his entourage for whose opinion the Sultan had the same respect as he had for that of the ruler of Tripoli.  Dragut had more than a tincture of learning:  he was first of all an incomparable leader of men and an entirely competent seaman.  He was also a scientific artillerist, and was learned in the technique of the fortification of his time.  Added to this he was—­albeit by no means so cruel as most of his contemporaries—­one of those men before whom all trembled:  as we have seen in the case of the corsairs who defended “Africa,” “they feared the wrath of Dragut more than death itself.”

It was this renowned leader who warned Soliman against the Knights; he pointed out that they were far more dangerous now than they had been in 1523, the year of their expulsion from Rhodes.  When established there they were, so to speak, surrounded by the Turkish Empire; in Malta, on the contrary, they were easily succoured from Sicily, which belonged to Spain, another implacable enemy of the Moslem; that Malta lay right on the route which all the ships of the Sultan must take on passage from the East to Constantinople; and in consequence the Order was a standing and perpetual menace to the trade of the Empire.  All this was so undeniably true that so shrewd a man and so competent a ruler as Soliman could not fail to be impressed by the soundness of the reasoning.