The Osmanli had ever been warriors since the times of the Prophet, of Abu-Bekr, of Othman, and of Ali; but so far their warlike achievements had been always on land, their only sea experience being confined to the crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar, when in the eighth century, under Tarik, they had swarmed into Andalusia, conquered Roderick the Goth, and set up that Moslem domination in Southern Spain which lasted until 1492, just before the events set forth in this book took place. Piracy in all ages is a thing in which a curious shuddering interest has been taken, and the deeds of the outlaws of the sea have never lacked chroniclers. There is for this a reason apart from the record of robbery and murder, which is the commonplace of piratical deeds: it resides in the perennial interest which men take in individual achievement, in the spectacle of absolute and complete domination by one man over the lives and the fortunes of others. This intense form of individualism is nowhere so well exhibited as in the story of piratical enterprise, where a band of men, outside of the law and divorced from all human kind by the atrocity of their deeds, has had to be welded into one homogeneous mass for the purpose of preying upon the world at large. Therefore he who would hold rule among such outlaws must himself be a man of no common description, for in him must be that quality which calls for instantaneous obedience among those with whom he is associated; behind him is no constituted authority, discipline is personal, enforced by the leader, and by him alone. Beneath him are men of the rudest and roughest description, slaves to their lusts and their passions, prone to mutiny, suspicious, and—worst of all—stupid.