The Admiralissimo of the Grand Turk, full
of years, honours, and booty, was on his last cruise, and one of the last
acts of his active life was the rescue of Dragut, the man who had served
him so well, and for whom he had so high a regard as a resourceful mariner,
from the degrading servitude into which he had fallen. The Spanish
historian, Marmol, recounts that the sum of three thousand ducats was paid
by Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa for the redemption of Dragut. As this history
was published in 1573, we must conclude that the author who wrote of these
events so soon after they had happened is correct; at the same time,
Barbarossa was in command of one hundred galleys of the Grand Turk, and it
was never his custom to pay for anything which he could take by force.
However this may have been, and the point is not one of very great
importance, the Genoese Senate was terrified lest their territory should be
ravaged; they wrote accordingly to their Grand Admiral, requesting that
Dragut might be released and sent on board of the galley of the admiral
basha. This was immediately done, and the man who for four years had tugged
at the Christian oar was once again in a position to make war on those who
had been for that period his masters.
Not only had he tugged at the Christian oar, but also he had tasted of the
Christian whip--and of very little else, as the food of the rower was as
scanty as it was disgusting; in consequence, if he had been an implacable
foe to Christendom before this event, he was not likely to have become less
so while toiling in the Genoese galley.
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