Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/49

 I shall use the word Moslem to mean Mussulman, or Mohammedan, or Moor, and I shall ask the reader to carry his mind back to the time when Ferdinand and Isabella turned the Moors out from Spain, and sent them across the straits of Gibraltar back to Africa. For seven hundred years these Moors had lived in the Iberian peninsula. It must be admitted in fairness that these Moors were exceedingly gifted intellectually, and there are ample evidences in Spain to this day of their accomplishments. On the other hand, it is perfectly easy to appreciate the desire of a Christian Government to banish these Mohammedans from a Catholic country. Equally comprehensible is the bitter hatred which these Moors for ever after manifested against all Christians of any nation, but against the Spanish more especially.

What were these Spanish Moors, now expatriated, to do? They spread themselves along the North African coast, but it was not immediately that they took to the sea; when, however, they did so accustom themselves it was not as traders but as pirates of the worst and most cruel kind. The date of their expulsion from Granada was 1492, and within a few years of this they had set to work to become avenged. The type of craft which they favoured was of the galley species, a vessel that was of great length, in proportion to her extreme shallowness, and was manned by a considerable number of oarsmen. Sail power was employed but only as auxiliary rather than of main reliance. Such a craft was light, easily and quickly manœuvred, could float in creeks and bays close in to the shore, or could be drawn up the beach if necessary. In all essential respects she was the direct lineal descendant of the old fighting galleys of Greece and Rome. From about the beginning of the sixteenth century till the battle of Lepanto in 1571 the Moslem