town, and set to work making raids into the adjoining country, carrying off sheep, cattle, and slaves.  For the Berbers this was a true awakening.  He who now oppressed them had come in the guise of a champion to assist them in the sack and plunder of Navarro’s Tower; they had exchanged King Log, who dwelt securely locked up, for a King Stork of the most active description.  Although we cannot sympathise with such people, it is quite possible to understand their very natural annoyance at the turn which things had taken, and it does not surprise us (in this age of “punic faith”) that a conspiracy was set on foot between the dwellers of the hinterland and the Spaniards of the fortress.

Uruj was informed of all that was going on through his own spies, and, although he kept his finger on the pulse of the conspiracy, he acted as though the tribesmen were still his very faithful friends and allies.  The corsair was more patient than his wont.  In this affair he wished for ample proof of delinquency, and also for a vengeance adequate to the occasion when he should discover all the guilty parties; and so some weeks went by while the plot was maturing, apparently, from the point of view of the conspirators, to a successful conclusion.  But Uruj had bided his time with a subtlety and finesse which would have done credit to Kheyr-ed-Din himself,

It was the custom of the corsair and his chief adherents to attend the principal mosque on Fridays; and therefore, when the conspirators were cordially invited to attend on the following Friday, and, after the service was over, to attend Uruj to his dwelling and there confer with him, they went, nothing doubting, to their deaths.  As the discourse of the Mullah came to an end a crash resounded throughout the building:  six stalwart swordsmen had flung the great gates of the mosque together, and barred all exit.  Excepting the conspirators, twenty-two in number, the remainder of the edifice was filled with the galley’s crews of the corsair, men who, had he given the order, would have cheerfully set alight to the sacred building itself and roasted the Mullahs themselves in the flames.

To the corsairs, after they were seated in the mosque, the word had been passed that the Berber tribesmen had meditated this treachery against them, which, had it succeeded, would have meant the death or enslavement of them all.  It was therefore a trap of a singularly deadly description into which the countrymen of Selim Eutemi walked on this Friday morning.

The doors being closed, the conspirators were one by one dragged before Uruj, who, bitterly reproaching them, gave order for their instant death.  They were haled out through rows of jeering pirates, and beheaded in the street immediately in front of the principal entrance of the mosque.  When the slaughter of the twenty—­two was accomplished Uruj strode from the mosque over the weltering corpses of the traitors amid the plaudits of his own men,