Promptly, hurriedly, but efficiently, the corsair organised his new
possession: such laws as he decreed did not err on the side of tenderness
towards a people so ungrateful as to have refused his protection in the
first instance, and who had only accepted the gift at the point of the
sword. His nephew Aisa, a man young in years but a past-graduate in the
school of his terrible uncle, was left in charge, while Dragut himself
sailed once more with his fleet, for, as it is put by the Spanish historian
Marmol, "truly the sea was his element."
Once again had a Moslem corsair bid defiance to that ruler whom Sandoval
and Marmol in their histories greet by the name of the "Modern Caesar." It
was told to Charles that Susa, Sfax, and Monastir had fallen, that "Africa"
was in the hands of the corsairs; "was he never to be free from these
pestilent knaves," he demanded of his trembling courtiers? Hot-foot came
the couriers from Charles to Andrea Doria, with orders to take Dragut dead
or alive, but alive for choice; and up and down the tideless sea in the
summer of 1549 did the great Genoese seaman range in search of the bold
corsair. Doria was getting a very old man now, but his eye was undimmed,
his strength yet tireless, his vigilance and zeal in the service of his
master unabated.
Dead or alive, great was the reward offered for the capture of Dragut, but
the veteran admiral required no stimulus of this sort to urge him to put
forth his utmost endeavours, to strain every nerve and sinew in the chase.
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