He
returned to Constantinople utterly discomfited. It was the seventh campaign
which the Sultan had conducted in person, but the first in which the
ever-faithful Ibrahim had not been by his side.
This defeat at the hands of the Venetians was not, however, the only
humiliation which he was destined to experience in this disastrous year;
for once again Doria, that scourge of the Moslem, was loose upon the seas,
and was making his presence felt in the immediate neighbourhood of Corfu,
where the Turks had been defeated. On July 17th Andrea had left the port of
Messina with twenty-five galleys, had captured ten richly laden Turkish
ships, gutted and burned them. Kheyr-ed-Din was at sea at the time, but the
great rivals were not destined to meet on this occasion. Instead of
Barbarossa, Andrea fell in with Ali-Chabelli, the lieutenant of Sandjak Bey
of Gallipoli. On July 22nd the Genoese admiral and the Turkish commander
from the Dardanelles met to the southward of Corfu, off the small island of
Paxo, and a smart action ensued. It ended in the defeat of Ali-Chabelli,
whose galleys were captured and towed by Doria into Paxo. That veteran
fighter was himself in the thickest of the fray, and, conspicuous in his
crimson doublet, had been an object of attention to the marksmen of
Chabelli during the entire action. In spite of the receipt of a severe
wound in the knee, the admiral refused to go below until victory was
assured.
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