hands of a totally insufficient garrison.  This departure from the sound rules of warfare had already been punished as it deserved, as the garrison was perpetually harassed and annoyed by the surrounding Arab tribes.  The idea of Uruj was to seize upon Bougie by a coup de main.  The corsair, however, was a far finer fighter than he was a strategist, and was possessed of a most impatient temper.  All went well to begin with, as he managed to intercept and to capture a convoy of Spanish ships sent to revictual the place, and had he been content to wait he might have counted with certainty on reducing the garrison by starvation, as it depended on this very convoy for its supplies.  In vain the wary and cool-headed Kheyr-ed-Din counselled prudence and delay, but these words were not to be found in the vocabulary of his elder brother.  “What had to be done,” he replied, “had better be done at once,” and at the head of only fifty men landed and assaulted the still uncompleted ramparts of Bougie.

But if Uruj were rash and headstrong, so was not the commander of the Spanish garrison, who, massing his men for the repulse of the assault, waited till the last moment, and then received them with a volley of arquebuses, which laid many of them low, and so badly wounded their leader that he had to have his arm amputated on the spot:  it says much for his constitution that he survived the operation.

For the time being the brothers had had enough of shore enterprises, and confined themselves strictly to their piratical business at sea, which prospered so exceedingly that they became exceedingly rich and their fame and power increased day by day.  As time went on and the wealth of the brothers and partners increased, there entered into the calculating brain of Kheyr-ed-Din the idea that the payment of one-fifth share to the Sultan of Tunis was but money thrown away.  Twenty per cent, was eating into the profits of the firm in an unwarrantable manner, he considered, and now that the active partners therein had established so good a business connection, they were quite strong enough to dispense with a sleeping partner.  Times had changed for the better, and Kheyr-ed-Din was anxious to take full advantage of the fact; if possible he determined to seize upon and hold some port, in which, not only would they be exempt from tribute, but also in which he and his brother Uruj should be the supreme arbiters of the fate of all by whom it might be frequented.

Of Bougie and its stout Spanish garrison the brothers had had quite enough for the present:  they sought, in consequence, for some harbour which presented equal advantages of situation, and their choice fell upon Jigelli, then belonging to the Genoese, who occupied a strong castle in this place.