This life which they led made of them what they were, namely desperate
swordsmen, efficient men at arms, incomparably skilful in the management of
the craft in which they put to sea; but it did nothing else for them in the
way of education; in consequence he who would rise to the top, who aspired
to be a leader amongst them and not to remain a mere swash-buckling
swordsman all his life, was bound to acquire that dominance necessary for
control of the wild spirits of the age. Nor was this ascendancy by any
means easy to obtain, as the rank and file led lives of incredible
bitterness, almost inconceivable to modern ideas. What they suffered they
alone knew, but it was compounded of hunger, thirst, heat, cold, sickness
unrelieved by care or tending, wounds which festered for lack of
medicaments, death which ever stared them in the face, and last, and worst
of all, the risk of capture by some Christian foe, by whom they would be
chained to the rowers' bench and taste of a bitterness absolutely
unimaginable. As a set-off to this the man who aspired to lead must offer
to his followers at least a record of success in small things; also he had
to be something of an enthusiast, something of an orator, some one subtly
persuasive. Against all the disagreeables of the strenuous life of the
corsair he had to hold before the dazzled eyes of Selim, Ali, or Mahomet
the promise of fat captures of the merchant vessels of the foe; when they
had but to slit a few throats and to return with their brigantines laden to
the gunwale with desirable plunder.
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