“What galley is that?”

“Hassan Pasha’s, viceroy of Cyprus.”

“How comes it, then, that you, being mussulmans are plundering this brigantine, on board of which, as we know, is the cadi of Nicosia?”

The reply to this was that they only knew that the pasha had ordered them to take it, and that they, as his soldiers, had done his bidding.  The commander of the galley under Christian colours having now ascertained what he wanted to know, desisted from attacking Hassan’s and fell upon the cadi’s brigantine, killed ten of its Turkish crew at the first volley, and immediately boarded it with great impetuosity.  Then the cadi discovered that his assailant was no Christian, but Ali Pasha, Leonisa’s lover, who had been laying wait to carry her off, and had disguised himself and his soldiers as Christians, the better to conceal his purpose.

The cadi, finding himself thus assailed on all sides, began loudly to exert his lungs.  “What means this, Ali Pasha, thou traitor?” he cried.  “How comes it that, being a mussulman, thou attackest me in the garb of a Christian?  And you, perfidious soldiers of Hassan, what demon has moved you to commit so great an outrage?  How dare you, to please the lascivious appetite of him who sent you, set yourselves against your sovereign?” At these words, the soldiers on both sides lowered their arms, looked upon and recognised each other, for they had all served under one captain and one flag.  Confounded by the cadi’s words, and by their conscious criminality, they sheathed their blades, and seemed quite discomfited.  Ali alone shut his eyes and his ears to everything, and rushing upon the cadi, dealt him such a stroke on the head with his scimetar, that, but for the hundred ells of stuff that formed his turban, he would certainly have cleft it in two.  As it was, he knocked the cadi down among the rower’s benches, where he lay, exclaiming amid his groans, “O cruel renegade!  Enemy of the Prophet!  Can it be that there is no true mussulman left to avenge me?  Accursed one! to lay violent hands on thy cadi, on a minister of Mahomet!”

The cadi’s denunciations made a strong impression on the minds of Hassan’s soldiers, who, fearing besides that Ali’s men would despoil them of the booty they already looked upon as their own, determined to put all to the hazard of battle.  Suddenly they fell upon Ali’s men with such vehemence that, although the latter were the stronger party, they soon thinned their numbers considerably; the survivors, however, quickly rallied, and so well avenged their slaughtered comrades, that barely four of Hassan’s men remained alive, and those too badly wounded.  Ricardo and Mahmoud, who had been watching the fight, putting their heads out every now and then at the cabin hatchway, seeing now that most of the Turks were dead, and the survivors all wounded, and that they might very easily be mastered, called upon Halima’s father and two of his nephews to aid them in seizing