now new men forced themselves to the front, a new power arose which was
very imperfectly understood, and which practically held the sea at its
mercy. Gone were the halcyon days of peaceful trade which had been pursued
for generations by Venetian and Genoese, by Spaniard and Frenchman; gone
also, apparently never to return, was all sense of security for the
wretched dwellers on the littoral of the Mediterranean, who lived in daily,
and particularly in nightly, dread of the falcon swoop of the pirate
galleys.

It is amusing to read the old chroniclers, sticklers as they were for "the
dignity of history," continually having to turn aside from the main stream
of their narrative of emperors, popes, and kings to descend to the level of
the Sea-wolves, and to be constrained to set down the nefarious doings of
these rovers of the sea. Bell, book, and candle were invoked against them
in vain, and mighty monarchs had to meet them in the stricken field not
merely once or twice--to their utter undoing and discomfiture--but many
times, while victory inclined first to one side and then to the other.

The Osmanli had ever been warriors since the times of the Prophet, of
Abu-Bekr, of Othman, and of Ali; but so far their warlike achievements had
been always on land, their only sea experience being confined to the
crossing of the Straits of Gibraltar, when in the eighth century, under
Tarik, they had swarmed into Andalusia, conquered Roderick the Goth, and
set up that Moslem domination in Southern Spain which lasted until 1492,
just before the events set forth in this book took place. Piracy in all
ages is a thing in which a curious shuddering interest has been taken, and
the deeds of the outlaws of the sea have never lacked chroniclers. There is
for this a reason apart from the record of robbery and murder, which is the
commonplace of piratical deeds: it resides in the perennial interest which
men take in individual achievement, in the spectacle of absolute and