Page:Daring deeds of famous pirates; true stories of the stirring adventures, bravery and resource of pirates, filibusters & buccaneers (1917).djvu/69

 CHAPTER VI

GALLEYS AND GALLANTRY

But there was a third great Barbarian corsair to complete this terrible trio. Uruj and Kheyr-ed-din we have known. There is yet to be mentioned Dragut, who succeeded to the latter. He too was a Moslem who had been born in a coast village of Asia Minor, opposite the island of Rhodes. His early life is that of most pirates. He went to sea when quite young, was devoted to his profession, was filled with ambition, became an expert pilot and later became a skipper of his own craft. Then, feeling the call of the wild, he devoted himself to piracy and rose to notoriety.

But the turning-point in his career came when he joined himself to the service of Kheyr-ed-din, who appointed Dragut to the entire command of a dozen of the corsair king's galleys. Henceforward his life was that of his master, ravaging the Italian coasts, pillaging Mediterranean ships and dragging thousands of lives away into slavery. Two years after the battle of Prevesa, Dragut was in fame second only to Kheyr-ed-din, and another Doria—the nephew of Andrea—was sent forth to capture this new wasp of the sea. Doria succeeded in throwing his net so well that off the Corsican coast he was able to bring back Dragut as prisoner, and for the next four years the ex