All his life he had been fighting the corsairs, mostly with conspicuous
success; but what Andrea could never forget--and what his enemies never
allowed him to forget even had he been so inclined--was the fact that, at
the supreme crisis of his valiant life, when he met with Kheyr-ed-Din
Barbarossa at the battle of Prevesa, he had come off so badly that his
under officers of the Papal and Venetian fleets had made representations,
on their return to their respective headquarters, which had detracted from
his fame, and lowered him in the estimation of Europe. Further than this,
he knew that Barbarossa had laughed at and made game of him among his wild
followers: this to the aristocrat, the Prince of Oneglia, the admiral who
treated on almost equal terms with such men as the Pope, Charles of Spain,
and Francis of France, was an insult hard to be borne; the next corsair
with whom he should meet should not escape so easily as had Kheyr-ed-Din,
that the admiral had sworn.
Personal pique and vanity, racial detestation, and religious fanaticism
were in his case all allied together to spur him on in the chase of this
the last of the Emperor's foes; but, search as he might, during that summer
Doria could never get on to the track of Dragut. The corsairs, as we have
just remarked, were fine fighters on occasion when it was necessary for the
purposes of loot, or of escape from those who, like Doria, interfered with
their particular method of gaining a livelihood; but, on the other hand,
they were no fools, they did not covet hard knocks and the possibility of
defeat from such a one as the admiral of the Emperor, when by the exercise
of a little ingenuity they could keep out of his way.
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