We have already said that he was a man who never knew when he was
beaten, and in the years which we have yet to chronicle this characteristic
appears again and again; for age had no effect apparently, either mentally
or physically, on this man of iron who had by this time reached the age of
seventy-seven.
Leaving the high officers of his future master, the Grand Turk, smarting
under the opprobrium which he had heaped upon their heads, Barbarossa fared
onward with his fleet to Salonica, capturing a Venetian galley on the
voyage: from thence he made his way to the Dardanelles, where he anchored
and remained several days, to make ready his fleet for the spectacular
entry which he intended to make into Constantinople.
The city on the Golden Horn was all agog for the arrival of Barbarossa; no
matter what private opinions the inhabitants might have had concerning him,
of which we shall hear more presently, they were none the less all curious
to a degree to catch sight of this man, so famous in his evil supremacy on
that distant shore of Northern Africa.
Kheyr-ed-Din, among his other qualities, possessed in the highest degree
that of a successful stage-manager; no pageant which he undertook was ever
likely to fail from the want of the striking and the dramatic. It was now
his business to impress the citizens of Constantinople with an idea of his
greatness, and none knew better than he that it is the outward and visible
sign which counts among the orientals, more perhaps than the inward and
spiritual grace: he may also possibly have felt that he did not possess the
latter to any overwhelming extent.
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