but, after all, there was some colour, some shadow of right in what they did, for their argument was that they were merely getting back from Christendom that which had been reft from them in the near past in the kingdoms of Cordova and Granada.  But who shall find excuse for the Christian kings, governors, and princes at this epoch?  They sought their prey no less ravenously than did the pirates, and with just about the same amount of justification:  witness the sacking of Rome by Charles V. in 1527, and the unexampled act of treachery just recorded of Francis of France.

Kheyr-ed-Din had lived all his turbulent life among wars and rumours of wars:  the head of the tiller, the hilt of the scimitar, the butt of the arquebus, had been in his hand since early youth; bloodshed and strife were the atmosphere in which he lived and breathed.  Desperate adventures by land and sea had been his ever since he could remember; there was no hazard that he had not run, no peril which he had not dared.  But now even he, the veteran of far more than one hundred fights, was grave and preoccupied when he considered the greatness, the imminence of his peril.  The “Clerigo Francese” had put him in possession of the fact that Carlos Quinto was exerting all his strength for the combat which was to come; and Barbarossa was far too old a fighter, far too wise a warrior, to underrate by one soldier or by one galley the forces that the Emperor could put into line against him; from far and near his foes were gathering for his destruction, and he did not deceive himself in the least as to what the fate of his followers and himself would be should the Christian hosts be victorious.

But, nevertheless, such an emergency as this found the man at his best:  ready to take fortune at the flood when she smiled upon him, he was perhaps at his very greatest in adversity; and when all around him trembled and paid one of their infrequent visits to the Mosque to implore the aid of the Prophet, the veteran corsair was coolly reviewing the situation, seeking a way to weather the tempest before which lesser men shrank appalled, declaring that the end had come.  The storm was coming in a squall of such violence as even he had never before experienced, but, thanks to his friend the King of France, he had been forewarned.  He sent at once to his master, Soliman the Magnificent, at Constantinople, to impart to him the direful intelligence; then the bagnios were thrown open, and, under pitiless lash and scourge, the Christian captives toiled from dawn till dark to repair the fortifications of Tunis.  Silent and unapproachable, conferring with none, the grim old Sea-wolf sat in his palace overlooking the bay and considered the question of whether he should give battle by land or sea when the time came.  If it were possible, he came to the conclusion that it should be the latter; he had been evicted from his kingdom on land once before, but he knew that in the open ocean few cared to face Barbarossa, and he might fall on Doria first and the Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem second if matters turned out favourably for him.  In any case, he must summon all the aid that was possible.