A man less able, less determined, than Dragut, might well have despaired; but he brought to bear on the problem with which he was confronted all the subtlety of his nature, all the resourcefulness of the born seaman that he was. His mind had been made up from the very beginning: the earthworks at the Bocca de Cantara, the movements of troops, the furious cannonading, had all been nothing but a blind to hide the real design which he had in view. In addition to his fighting men he had at his command some two thousand islanders, stout Mohammedans to a man, ready and willing to assist him in his design of cheating the Christians of their prey. Day and night, with ceaseless silent toil, had garrison and islanders been at work on the scheme which the leader had devised. From the head of the harbour Dragut had caused a road to be made right across the island to the sea on the opposite side: on this road he caused planks to be laid, bolted to sleepers and then thickly greased. The vessels of the day were of course comparatively speaking light, and capable of being manhandled, supposing that you had sufficient hands. At dead of night Dragut assembled his forces, and before morning every galley, galeasse, and brigantine had been dragged across the island and launched in the sea on the opposite side. There was then nothing left to do but to embark stores, guns, and ammunition and to sail quietly away, and this was what happened. Once again Dragut faded away beyond the skyline, “leaving Andrea Doria with the dog to hold,” in the quaint language of the chronicler of these events, Don Luys de Marmol Caravajal. Not only did the indefatigable corsair get clear away without any suspicion on the part of the admiral, but his first act on gaining the open sea was to capture the _Patrona_ galley sent from Sicily by Don Juan de Vega to say that reinforcements were on the road. In this ill-fated craft was Buguer, the son of Muley Hassan, King of Tunis, who was sent as prize to Soliman at Constantinople, where the Sultan caused him to be shut up in the “Torre del Mar Negro.” Here he remained till he died, as a punishment for that he, a Mussulman, had aided the Christians. Never again was Dragut to be in such sore straits as he was on this occasion at the island of Jerbah, when, by sheer wit and cunning, he escaped from the trap in which he had been held by Doria. What the emotions of the admiral must have been when he found that once again he had been fooled, it is not difficult to imagine, as by no possible means could the story be hushed up; and, in spite of the annoyance of Christendom generally at the escape of Dragut, no one could help admiring his extraordinary cleverness, or roaring with laughter at the discomfiture of Doria and the viceroys of Naples and Sicily.