Then the procession of the captives through the crowded streets laden with
what a short time before had been their own property--a mournful _cortege_
of men doomed to an everlasting slavery and of women destined for the
harems of the Bashas.
Thus was his life lived, and when death came it came as a rule from the
slash of a sabre or the ball from an arquebus or a bombard; and then what
matter, for had not Hassan Ali or Selim fallen in strife against the
enemies of his faith, and did not the portals of heaven open wide to
receive the man who had lost his life testifying to the fact that there was
but one God, and that Mahomet was the Prophet of God?
True in substance and in fact is that which was said by the Frere Pierre
d'An that "it is indisputable that the sea is the Theatre of the storms and
the place in the world most capable of all sorts of violence and tragic
adventure." Those who "coveted the goods of others straying on the sea,"
called by the reverend brother "the implacable, corsairs of Barbary," were
to make life intolerable on that element for centuries to come, and if the
Crescent did not supersede the banner of the Cross in the blue waters of
the Mediterranean Sea, it remained as a portent and a dread symbol of human
misery and unutterable suffering.
CHAPTER II
THE COMING OF THE CORSAIRS
The rise and progress of the Moslem corsairs of the Mediterranean is a most
curious and interesting historical fact.
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