On that stage, which was the blue waters of the tideless sea, we shall, from this time forward, watch the fortunes of those two great sea-captains, Andrea Doria and Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa.  With them the ebb and flow of conquest and defeat alternated.  Great as was the one, it cannot be said that he was greater than the other; but when the supreme arbitrament was within the grasp of both, as it was at the naval battle of Prevesa, neither the Christian admiral nor the Moslem corsair would reach out his hand and grasp the nettle of his fate.  Hesitation at this moment, when, in the fulness of time, the rivals stood face to face with arms in their hands, was the last thing that would have been expected of such dauntless warriors, such born leaders of men! and the battle of Prevesa presents a psychological problem of the most baffling and perplexing description.  We are, however, anticipating events which will fall into their proper sequence as we proceed.

Kheyr-ed-Din, now firmly established in Algiers, devoted his energies to the undoing of his Christian foes by the systematic plunder of their merchant-vessels.  At this period he, personally, seems to have remained ashore, and sent his young and aspiring captains to sea to increase his wealth by plunder, his consequence by the hordes of slaves which they swept into the awful bagnios of Algiers; and Sandoval, that quaint and delightful historian, is moved to indignation and complains with much acrimony of “las malas obras que este corsario hizo a la Christiandad” (the evil deeds done to Christianity by this corsair).  These were on so considerable a scale at this time that he had to devote to them far more space than he considered consonant with the dignity of history.

But if all were going on well on the coast of Africa for the Crescent, such was far from being the case in the northern waters of the Mediterranean; for Andrea Doria, serving His Most Catholic Majesty at sea, had defeated the Turks at Patras and again in the Dardanelles, which unpleasant fact caused no little annoyance to Soliman the Magnificent.  On land the Sultan was sweeping all before him; at sea this pestilent Genoese was dragging into servitude all the best mariners who sailed beneath the banner of the Prophet.  There was wrath and there was fear at Constantinople, and the captains of the galleys which sailed from the Golden Horn felt that their heads and their bodies might at any moment part company—­the Grand Turk was in an ill humour, which might at any moment call for the appeasement of sacrifice; so it was that men trembled.

It was at this time, in 1533, that Soliman bethought himself of Kheyr-ed-Din.  There was no better seaman, there was no fiercer fighter, there was no man whose name was so renowned throughout the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, than was that of the corsair king who was vassal to the Sublime Porte.  Soliman was confronted with a new, and, to him, an almost mysterious thing, for the onward conquering step of the Moslem hosts was being checked by that sea-power so little understanded of the Turk, and the imperious will of the Sultan seemed powerless to prevent the disasters conjured from the deep.