Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/61

 And now yet another invitation came to Kheyr-ed-din. Andrea Doria had defeated the Turks at Patras and in the Dardanelles. Like the policy of the corsairs, after each victory the Christian admiral employed the infidel captives to work at the oars of his galleys. Thus it was that the Sultan of Turkey—Solyman the Magnificent—realising that the Christian admiral was draining the best Turkish seafaring men, determined to invite Kheyr-ed-din to help him against Andrea Doria. So one of the Sultan's personal guard was dispatched to Algiers requesting Barbarossa to come to Constantinople and place himself at the head of the Ottoman navy. Barbarossa accepted this as he had accepted other invitations, seeing that it was to his own interest, and in August 1533 left Algiers with seven galleys and eleven other craft. On the way he was joined by sixteen more craft belonging to a pirate named Delizuff, but before they had got to the end of the voyage Delizuff was killed in an attack on a small island named Biba. There followed some friction between the men of the deceased pirate and those of Barbarossa, and finally one dark night the ships of Delizuff stole away from Barbarossa's fleet.

Eventually this Sultan of Algiers, with his ships, arrived at Constantinople. The case stood thus. The Ottoman subject was an excellent man to fight battles by land, but not by sea. Barbarossa was a true fighting seaman: therefore let him do for us that which we ourselves cannot do. He was only three years short of becoming an octogenarian, yet this veteran corsair was as able as he was wicked, and so, after the Ottoman dockyards in the following year had provided him with additional ships, Barbarossa set forth from Constantinople and began by sacking Reggio, burning Christian ships and carrying off their crews. Thence he laid waste the coast until he came to Naples, and altogether