CHAPTER IV
THE DEATH OF URUJ BARBAROSSA
The events recorded in the last chapter bring us down to the end of the
year 1515, and while every endeavour has been made to present affairs in
chronological sequence, it must be remembered that the dates of piratical
expeditions are often impossible to obtain: the wrath of the chroniclers at
the nefarious deeds of the corsairs greatly exceeding their desire for a
meticulous accuracy in the matter of the exact time of their occurrence.
Uruj, as has been seen, had by his headstrong folly once again placed his
brother and himself in a decidedly awkward situation. By the losses which
he had incurred in his second ill-advised attempt on Bougie he had so
weakened the piratical confederation that the countenance of some potentate
had again become necessary for their continued existence, and the Sultan of
Tunis had now repudiated all connection with these ingrates.
But, if craft and subtlety were not to be found in Uruj there was one who
never failed to exhibit these qualities when they became necessary, and
Kheyr-ed-Din once more came to the front. The Russian peasantry have a
saying that "God is high and the Czar is far away." In the sixteenth
century the Grand Turk was in every sense "far away" from the struggling
corsairs on the littoral of Northern Africa, and was a sovereign of such
great and mysterious might that any man with a less fine instinct into the
psychology of the times in which he lived than Kheyr-ed-Din would have
hesitated long and anxiously before addressing him directly; would probably
in the end not have done so at all.
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