Dead or alive, great was the reward offered for the capture of Dragut, but the veteran admiral required no stimulus of this sort to urge him to put forth his utmost endeavours, to strain every nerve and sinew in the chase. All his life he had been fighting the corsairs, mostly with conspicuous success; but what Andrea could never forget—and what his enemies never allowed him to forget even had he been so inclined—was the fact that, at the supreme crisis of his valiant life, when he met with Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa at the battle of Prevesa, he had come off so badly that his under officers of the Papal and Venetian fleets had made representations, on their return to their respective headquarters, which had detracted from his fame, and lowered him in the estimation of Europe. Further than this, he knew that Barbarossa had laughed at and made game of him among his wild followers: this to the aristocrat, the Prince of Oneglia, the admiral who treated on almost equal terms with such men as the Pope, Charles of Spain, and Francis of France, was an insult hard to be borne; the next corsair with whom he should meet should not escape so easily as had Kheyr-ed-Din, that the admiral had sworn. Personal pique and vanity, racial detestation, and religious fanaticism were in his case all allied together to spur him on in the chase of this the last of the Emperor’s foes; but, search as he might, during that summer Doria could never get on to the track of Dragut. The corsairs, as we have just remarked, were fine fighters on occasion when it was necessary for the purposes of loot, or of escape from those who, like Doria, interfered with their particular method of gaining a livelihood; but, on the other hand, they were no fools, they did not covet hard knocks and the possibility of defeat from such a one as the admiral of the Emperor, when by the exercise of a little ingenuity they could keep out of his way. Dragut was not going to fight a general action at sea merely to please Doria; in this summer his luck stood to him, and he never came across this man, who, with a sombre hatred in his heart, was seeking him high and low. If the corsair were bold as a lion when occasion offered, he was no less as slippery as an eel when he desired to escape; to face twenty-two royal galleys with Doria in command was no part of his programme. An occasion might arise when he would be forced to action; should this happen Dragut had not forgotten his four years in the galley of Jannetin Doria, the nephew of the admiral, and next time he intended to fight to win. Just at present the Christian admiral was in too great strength for him to do aught but keep out of his way, and much to Andrea’s annoyance this was what he succeeded in doing.