SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN [Illustration: KHEYR-ED-DIN BARBAROSSA—CORSAIR, ADMIRAL, AND KING.] SEA-WOLVES OF THE MEDITERRANEAN THE GRAND PERIOD OF THE MOSLEM CORSAIRS BY COMMANDER E. HAMILTON CURREY, R.N. WITH PORTRAITS AND ILLUSTRATIONS “Ships are but boards, sailors but men: There be land rats and water rats, land thieves and water thieves, I mean pirates.” _Merchant of Venice._ LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W 1910 TO THAT GRACIOUS LADY TO WHOSE COUNSEL AND ENCOURAGEMENT I OWE SO MUCH MORE THAN ANY ONE—SAVE I—CAN IMAGINE... TO MY WIFE I DEDICATE THIS BOOK PREFACE When the ship is ready for launching there comes a moment of tense excitement before the dogshores are knocked away and she slides down the ways. In the case of a ship this excitement is shared by many thousands, who have assembled to acclaim the birth of a perfected product of the industry of man; the emotion is shared by all those who are present. It is very different when a book has been completed. The launching has been arranged for and completed by expert hands; she like the ship gathers way and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the ship which is certain to float, the waters may close over and engulf her, or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect. There is excitement in the breast of one man alone—to wit, the author. If his book possesses one supreme qualification she will escape the fate mentioned, and this qualification is—interest. As the weeks lengthened into months, and these multiplied themselves to the tale of something like twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened that that which had so profoundly interested the writer, would not be altogether indifferent to others. For some inscrutable reason the deeds of sea-robbers have always possessed a fascination denied to those of their more numerous brethren of the land; and in the case of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth century we are dealing with the very aristocrats of the profession. Circumstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem population of Southern Spain on to the shores of Northern Africa: to revenge themselves upon the Christian foe by whom this expropriation had been accomplished was natural to a warrior race; and those who heretofore had been land-folk pure and simple took to piracy as a means of livelihood. It is of the deeds of these men that this book treats; of their marvellous triumphs, of their apparently hopeless defeats, of the manner in which they audaciously maintained themselves against the principalities and the powers of Christendom always hungering for their destruction.