Two years later he died, in July, 1546, an old man of perhaps near ninety, yet without surviving his great fame. "Valorous yet prudent, furious in attack, foreseeing in preparation," he ranks as the first sea captain of his time. "The chief of the sea is dead," expressed in three Arabic words, gives the numerical value 953, the year of the Hijra in which Kheyr-ed-dīn Barbarossa died. Long afterwards no Turkish fleet left the Golden Horn without her crew repeating a prayer and firing a salute over the tomb at Beshiktash, where lie the bones of the first great Turkish admiral. FOOTNOTE: [37] See S. Lane-Poole, _The Speeches and Tabletalk of the Prophet Mohammad_, 168. XI. CHARLES AT ALGIERS. 1541. When Barbarossa left Algiers for ever in 1535 to become the High Admiral of the Ottoman Empire, the Corsairs lost indeed their chief; but so many of his captains remained behind that the game of sea roving went on as merrily as ever. Indeed so fierce and ruthless were their depredations that the people of Italy and Spain and the islands began to regret the attentions of so gentlemanly a robber as Barbarossa. His successor or viceroy at Algiers was a Sardinian renegade, Hasan the Eunuch; but the chief commanders at sea were Dragut, Sālih Reïs, Sinān, and the rest, who, when not called to join the Captain Pasha's fleet, pursued the art of piracy from the Barbary coast. Dragut (properly Torghūd) worked measureless mischief in the Archipelago and Adriatic, seized Venetian galleys and laid waste the shores of Italy, till he was caught by Giannettino Doria, nephew of the great admiral, while unsuspectingly engaged in dividing his spoils on the Sardinian coast (1540). Incensed to find his vast empire perpetually harassed by foes so lawless and in numbers so puny, Charles the Emperor resolved to put down the Corsairs' trade once and for ever. He had subdued Tunis in 1535, but piracy still went on. Now he would grapple the head and front of the offence, and conquer Algiers. He had no fears of the result; the Corsair city would fall at the mere sight of his immense flotilla; and in this vainglorious assurance he set out in October, 1541. He even took Spanish ladies on board to view his triumph. The season for a descent on the African coast was over, and every one knew that the chance of effecting anything before the winter storms should guard the coast from any floating enemy was more than doubtful; but "the Spaniards commonly move with gravity"; and besides, Charles had been delayed during a busy summer by his troubles in Germany and Flanders, and could not get away before.