The fact of his known cruelty accounts for much of the dread which he inspired, but it was something far more than this which caused the son of the Albanian renegado to ride roughshod as he did over all with whom he was brought into contact. Men felt, in dealing with Barbarossa, that here was a rock against which they might dash themselves in vain. In all his enterprises he spared not himself. He asked no man to do that which he was not prepared to do, but if any failed him there was no mercy for that man; and, although in deference to modern susceptibility no mention is made of the tortures he so frequently caused to be inflicted on his victims, they were none the less a daily spectacle to those who lived under his rule. He possessed, it is true, the rough geniality of the fighting man, a certain “Hail fellow, well met!” manner in greeting old comrades, and yet none of these men there were who did not tremble in an agony of fear when the bushy brows were bent, when the famous red beard bristled in one of his uncontrollable furies. The real secret of his success must have been that, no matter how uncontrollable did his passions appear to be, the man was always really master of himself. Further, he possessed a marvellous insight as to where his own interests lay. He used as his tools the bodies and the minds of the men who were subject to him, and he carried his designs to an assured success by the aid of that penetrating, far-seeing mental power with which, above all else, he must have been gifted. He could drive men, he could lead them, he could invariably persuade when all else failed him. In this we have had an instance when he was chased from Algiers by the combined efforts of Venalcadi and Hassan, whom he had flogged; for no sooner did he meet with other corsairs than he persuaded them to take up his quarrel—which, it must be understood, was none of theirs—and to replace him on that precarious throne from which he had been so rudely thrust. We have already said that he was a man who never knew when he was beaten, and in the years which we have yet to chronicle this characteristic appears again and again; for age had no effect apparently, either mentally or physically, on this man of iron who had by this time reached the age of seventy-seven. Leaving the high officers of his future master, the Grand Turk, smarting under the opprobrium which he had heaped upon their heads, Barbarossa fared onward with his fleet to Salonica, capturing a Venetian galley on the voyage: from thence he made his way to the Dardanelles, where he anchored and remained several days, to make ready his fleet for the spectacular entry which he intended to make into Constantinople.