On either side the way of salvation was the path of
conquest, and the man who was heretic to the faith which you professed was
rightly served if you could cut him and his off from among the
congregation.
It was well for the corsair to make as many friends as possible, as among
his enemies he counted all the kings of Christendom; and, looking back on
his career, it seems but little short of a miracle that he was not crushed
out of existence, not once but a hundred times. But, as has been said
already, the root of true statesmanship was in Kheyr-ed-Din. He watched
with eager eye the quarrels of the great kings on the continent of Europe;
he saw his life-long rival at sea, the greatest of all Christian mariners,
Andrea Doria, the Genoese admiral, transfer his allegiance from the French
King Francis I. to the Emperor Charles V. He noted and took full advantage
of the perpetual squabbles between the Genoese and Venetian Republics, and
all the time was in touch with the Sea-wolves, who swarmed on the coasts of
Africa, and lurked in every creek and harbour of the Ionian Sea. "In all
the bloody hazards of his life," to quote once again the words of the Grand
Turk, "he could, in the end, depend more or less on the corsairs, whether
they ostensibly sailed beneath his banner or whether they did not, as when
danger threatened what name was so potent as that of Barbarossa, which his
followers asserted to be worth ten thousand men, when shouted on the day of
battle!"
That which is most extraordinary in the life of Kheyr-ed-Din is the
perpetual danger and stress in which it was lived.
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