Again he had to hearten them for
possible encounters with Spaniards, with the terrible Doria, or worst of
all with the dreaded Knights of St. John themselves; to point out that to
die in conflict with the infidel was a sure passport to heaven and its
houris, and to invoke great names, such as that of Barbarossa to show to
what dizzy heights the fighting Moslem could climb. In such an age and
among such men as these it was no mean feat to become a leader by whom men
swore and to whom they yielded a ready obedience.
Fashioned by the hammer of misfortune on the anvil of racial expropriation,
such leaders arose among the Moslems, men of iron, before whom all who
worshipped at the altars of Islam bowed the knee. These men, whose fame
extended throughout all the length and breadth of the Mediterranean, taught
to European rulers something of the value of that great force which is
known to us under the modern name of "Sea Power."
Next in importance to Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa himself and in many ways his
very worthy successor, was Dragut Reis. We have it on the authority of
Messire Pierre de Bourdeille, the Seigneur de Brantome, that Dragut was
born at a small village in Asia Minor called Charabulac, opposite to the
island of Rhodes, and that his parents were Mahommedans. Being born within
sight and sound of the sea, the youthful Dragut naturally graduated in the
school of the brigantine and completed his education on board of a galley.
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