Hot on the tracks of
Adan Centurion and his nephew John came the veteran Andrea Doria with forty
galleys, but he was too late, and the bird had flown; had it been he who
had arrived in the first instance, then it is more than probable that
matters would have turned out differently, and Kheyr-ed-Din had then and
there terminated his career. It is true that Andrea possessed himself of
Bona, and the Corsair King was shorn of yet another of his land-stations,
but for the time he had cut himself adrift from the land, and had gone back
to that element in which he was particularly at home.
Doria left Bona in the charge of Alvar Gomez and a company of Spanish
troops and then sailed away, if possible to find and capture Barbarossa,
thus to set the seal of completeness on the victory which had been won by
his master the Emperor. Another stronghold of the corsairs was now in most
competent hands, as Alvar Gomez Zagal was one of the most renowned
caballeros of Spain, son of that Pero Lopez de Horusco on whom the Moors
themselves had bestowed the title of "Al Zagal," or "The Valiant," on
account of his extraordinary bravery.
On August 17th Charles re-embarked his army and evacuated the country,
leaving, however, one thousand Spanish veterans, under the command of
Bernard de Mendoza, in charge of the Goletta, as a permanent memorial of
the expedition, and as a guarantee that the wretched Muley Hassan should
fully comply with the treaty obligations which had been imposed upon him.
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