They were brave men, these Mediterranean
seamen, and the risks which they ran in their strangely formed, unseaworthy
craft were of course much enhanced when they were loaded to the gunwale
with stores, provisions, horses, banners, and last, but by no means least,
a mob of seasick soldiery.
Into this armada were crowded twenty-five thousand infantry and six hundred
lancers with their horses.
Cagliari, in Sardinia, was the last rendezvous of the expedition, and here
it arrived in the early part of June, where a week was spent in making the
final preparations; and at last, on June 10th, a start was made for the
coast of Africa.
Meanwhile in Tunis Kheyr-ed-Din was working double tides. He was kept well
informed by his spies of all that was going on, and his preparations for
defence were as adequate as they could be made; the corsairs, as we have
said, had come flocking in at his call. He had withdrawn as many of his
fighting men from Algiers as he deemed prudent. Knowing that the attack was
directed against him personally, he had not much fear that it would be
diverted at the last moment. It would have been true strategy on the part
of Charles to have done this, but the Emperor considered that his honour
required that the attack should be an absolutely direct one, and so Algiers
was left on one side, to the ultimate upsetting of his plans. We say this
because, although in this case he was to take Tunis and to restore to the
throne of that country the puppet King Muley Hassan, and although he was to
rescue some twenty thousand Christian captives, he did not capture
Barbarossa, who was to live for many years to continue and to carry on his
unceasing war against the Christians.
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