“Dastard and slave! thou boastest that, thou hast destroyed defenceless villages and brought back many captives, but that shall avail thee nothing.  No profit shalt thou derive from that.  Let the captives be brought before me.”

This was done, and to the horror even of those hardened men of blood who followed in the train of Barbarossa, they were all executed.  Even this wholesale massacre did not assuage the wrath of the corsair.  Standing and surveying the weltering shambles which tainted the air, he pulled ferociously at his red beard, and commanded that they should whip Hassan till the blood ran; when this was done thoroughly and to the satisfaction of the despot, he gave orders that he should be chained and thrust into the prison of the fortress.

Terror stalked abroad in Algiers.  No man knew when his turn might come after this awful example of what it meant to incur the wrath of Barbarossa.  The corsair gave orders for the execution of Venalcadi, who, it will be remembered, was with Uruj when that warrior came by his death; but Venalcadi was popular among the pirates, and they connived at his escape.

For so cool and politic a man as Kheyr-ed-Din this outburst is wholly inexplicable.  Judged by our standards, the flogging of Hassan was not only brutal but silly, as raising up to himself enemies of the most bitter description in the midst of his own followers; and yet cruelty was so engrained in this man that he never forewent his revenge.  It is a standing miracle that he escaped assassination in the age in which he lived, and the only explanation would appear to be that men were too much afraid of him to make the attempt.

The immediate result of the flogging of Hassan and the attempted murder of Venalcadi was that the latter collected a following and made war upon Kheyr-ed-Din, who, with incredible folly, then released Hassan, and sent him with five hundred men to fight against Venalcadi.  The result was what might have been anticipated:  Hassan joined forces with Venalcadi, and together they attacked the tyrant and drove him out of his stronghold.

Kheyr-ed-Din had the one supreme merit of never knowing when he was beaten.  Driven from the shore, there was for him always the sea to which to retire; so on this occasion he embarked his family and such of his riches as were portable, and took to the sea once more.  “Yendo a buscar nuevos asientos y nuevos amigos” (seeking a new home and new friends), says Sandoval.

It was well for the corsairs that the Christians had selected the previous year for their attack, as, had they fallen upon them when Barbarossa was no longer in power at Algiers and the pirates were fighting among themselves, the latter would have been wiped out of existence.  It was ill fighting with Kheyr-ed-Din, whether you professed the religion of Christ or that of Mahomet, and this the revolting corsairs were very soon to discover.  Barbarossa sailed away from Algiers a hunted fugitive, only to return again as a conqueror.