Uruj had arrogated to himself the title of King of Tlemcen, but with his death this shadowy sovereignty came to an end, and the Spaniards seized upon the province. This, however, did not avail them much, as the Sultan of Fez sent against them an innumerable army, and they in their turn were dispossessed. It was in the year 1518 that Uruj fell beneath the pike of Garzia de Tineo, and now the first place in the piratical hierarchy was taken by Kheyr-ed-Din. In this man the genius of the statesman lay hidden beneath the outward semblance of the bold and ruthless pirate; ever foremost in the fight, strong to endure, swift to smite, he had by now long passed his novitiate, had established an empire over the minds of men which was to endure until the end of his unusually prolonged life. With a brain of ice and a heart of fire, he looked out, serene and calm, upon the turbulent times in which he lived, a monstrous egotist desiring nothing but his own advancement, all his faculties bent upon securing more wealth and yet more power. He played a lone hand, for he brooked even less than did his truculent brother any approach to an equality with himself among the men who followed in his train. Absolute supremacy was his in the life which he lived, but none knew better than he upon what an unstable basis his power rested. He now called himself the King of Algiers, but still that lean, sun-dried garrison held with desperate tenacity to the tower of the redoubtable Navarro, and any moment a fresh Spanish relieving force might be upon him and chase him forth even as Uruj had been chased from Tlemcen. He saw that he must consolidate his power, must for the present, at any rate, have some force at his back which would provide that material and moral backing which was essential to his schemes. Once before he had successfully approached the Grand Turk, the Padishah, the head of the Mohammedan religion, and from him he had received that which he had asked; on this former occasion, however, he had not been in the same position as he now occupied. The corsair must have meditated long and anxiously on the best way in which to approach the autocrat of Constantinople; in the end he probably hit upon the best solution of the problem by again sending an ambassador with precise instructions as to the manner in which he was to act. For this important service his choice fell upon one of his captains, Hadj-Hossein by name, and to him he imparted all that he was to say, and—what was almost as important—what he was not to say.