Jigelli lies well outside the confines of the kingdom of Tunis, about equi-distant from Bougie and Cape Bougaroni, some forty miles from each.  It would appear that on this occasion it was the younger of the two brothers who took charge of the enterprise, and there were no slap—­dash, unconsidered methods employed.  By this time the fame of the Barbarossas had gone abroad from Valencia to Constantinople, from Rome to the foot—­hills of the Atlas Mountains, and, to circumvent the Genoese garrison of Jigelli, Kheyr-ed-Din called to his aid the savage Berber tribes of the hinterland of this part of Northern Africa.

Turbulent, rash, unstable as water, were these primitive dwellers of the desert; but they were fighters and raiders to a man, and ready for any desperate encounter if only it held out the promise of loot:  they were as veritably the pirates of the land as were the Barbarossas pirates of the sea.

Small chance, indeed, had the five hundred Genoese soldiers by which Jigelli was garrisoned when attacked from the sea by the Barbarossas and by land by an innumerable horde of Berbers who were reckoned to be as many as 20,000.  Invested by land and sea, the garrison did all that it was possible for men to do.  Provisions and water ran short, ammunition was failing, the ring of their enemies was encircling them day by day closer and ever closer.  From the land nothing could be expected but an augmentation of their foes, and day by day the commander of the garrison strained his eyes seaward to watch if haply the proud Republic, to which he and his men belonged, would send succour, or the redoubtable Knights of Saint John would come to his aid.

But the days lengthened into weeks, and the soldiers were gradually becoming worn out by the perpetual strain imposed upon them.  There was one chance left, and one alone, which was to cut their way out through the besieging lines.  Massacre to a man was their fate in any case, and thus it was that the commander, whose name has not come down to us, mustered his men for the last supreme effort.  At dead of night the garrison, having destroyed as far as possible all that might be of use to the enemy, sallied out to their doom.  They fought as men fight who know that the end has come; but valour could not avail against the numbers arrayed on the side of the enemy, and they were wiped off the face of the earth.  The tribes looted the castle of everything portable, and then retired from whence they had come.  For this Kheyr-ed-Din cared nothing; they were welcome to the poor possessions of some hundreds of half-starved Italian soldiers—­let them take the shell, for him remained the kernel in the shape of a strong place of arms.

Hardly, however, had the brothers succeeded in this enterprise when that tireless fighter Uruj again attempted the capture of Bougie; but his second attempt was even more disastrous than his first, and he lost half his flotilla.  Then he asked for succour from Tunis; but the Sultan, much offended at the idea of the brothers setting up in a piratical business in which he was no longer a sleeping partner, angrily refused.