The autumn of this year 1537 proved that the old Sea-wolf had lost none of his cunning, that his followers were as terrible as ever.  What did it seem to matter that Venetian and Catalan, Genoese and Frenchman, Andalusian and the dwellers in the Archipelago, were all banded together in league against this common foe?  Did not the redoubtable Andrea range the seas in vain, and were not all the efforts of the Knights of Saint John futile, when the son of the renegado from Mitylene and his Christian wife put forth from the Golden Horn?  What was the magic of this man, it was asked despairingly, that none seemed able to prevail against him?  Had it not been currently reported that Carlos Quinto, the great Emperor, had driven him forth from Tunis a hunted fugitive, broken and penniless, with never a galley left, without one ducat in his pocket?  Was he so different, then, from all the rest of mankind that his followers would stick to him in evil report as well as in the height of his prosperity?  Men swore and women crossed themselves at the mention of his name.

“Terrible as an army with banners,” indeed, was Kheyr-ed-Din in this eventful summer:  things had gone badly with the crescent flag, the Padishah was unapproachable in his palace, brooding perchance on that “might have been” had he not sold his honour and the life of his only friend to gratify the malice of a she-devil; those in attendance on the Sultan trembled, for the humour of the despot was black indeed.

But “the veritable man of the sea” was in some sort to console him for that which he had lost; as never in his own history—­and there was none else with which it could be compared—­had the Corsair King made so fruitful a raid.  He ravaged the coasts of the Adriatic and the islands of the Archipelago, sweeping in slaves by the thousand, and by the end of the year he had collected eighteen thousand in the arsenal at Stamboul.  Great was the jubilation in Constantinople when the Admiralissimo himself returned from his last expedition against the infidel; stilled were the voices which hinted disaffection—­who among them all could bring back four hundred thousand pieces of gold?  What mariner could offer to the Grand Turk such varied and magnificent presents?

Upon his arrival Barbarossa asked permission to kiss the threshold of the palace of the Sultan, which boon being graciously accorded to him, he made his triumphal entry.  Two hundred captives clad in scarlet robes carried cups of gold and flasks of silver behind them came thirty others, each staggering under an enormous purse of sequins; yet another two hundred brought collars of precious stones or bales of the choicest goods; and a further two hundred were laden with sacks of small coin.  Certainly if Soliman the Magnificent had lost a Grand Vizier he had succeeded in finding an admiral!