Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 11, 2025
The green banner of Islam was planted here centuries ago by a fanatical horde of Arab pirates, who added religious enthusiasm to love of plunder and thirst of conquest. Their fiery zeal, though not according to knowledge, ensured a vigorous growth of the foreign offshoot from the questionable faith of these Arab corsairs, who left indelible traces on the whole of the Malay Archipelago.
Followed upon its ending, a chanting as goldenly sonorous. Wild, peremptory, triumphant. It was like a mustering shouting to adventurous stars, buglings to buccaneering winds, cadenced beckonings to restless ranks of viking waves, signaling to all the corsairs and picaroons of the elemental. A cosmic call to slay!
The life of the common soldier or sailor did not offer many advantages; it was generally a short and anything but a merry one, and the thing by which it was most profoundly affected was capture by the corsairs. When this happened he became either a "gallerian," rowing out his heart on the benches of the Moslem galleys, or he festered in some noisome dungeon in Algiers, Oran, or Tlemcen.
Taken by surprise, and indeed outnumbered, the resistance of the corsairs was but slight. In a close fierce mêlée like this the light-armed Moors had but little chance with the mail-clad English, whose heavy swords and axes clove their defenses at a blow. The fight lasted but three minutes, and then the last of the corsairs was overboard.
As we came off it, our hearts beat high with satisfaction, for there lay the fleet for which we were in search. The admiral, who was well acquainted with the dilatoriness of Spanish diplomacy, not waiting for leave, bearing down on the corsairs attacked the Roebuck, the largest of their ships, and quickly mastered her.
After them, dejected and in chains, came the five score prisoners taken aboard the Dutchman, urged along by the whips of the corsairs who flanked them. Then marched another regiment of corsairs, and after these the long line of stately, sneering camels, shuffling cumbrously along and led by shouting Saharowis.
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.
"Gervaise could do more, Countess, as was shown in that attack on the corsairs by means of fire ships. He has a head to plan, and, in the case I speak of, a happy thought of his not only saved the lives of ourselves and Sir John Boswell, but, indirectly, was the means of preventing two of our galleys being captured by the corsairs." "Which is Sir Gervaise?" one of the ladies asked. Ralph smiled.
Yet our repeated attempts to effect this, by prohibitions, and by imposing duties which might amount to a prohibition, have been hitherto defeated by his Majesty's negative: thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.
"Here is a noble twain," the dalal announced, "strong of muscle and long of limb, as all may see, whom it were a shameful thing to separate. Who needs such a pair for strong labour let him say what he will give." He set out on a slow circuit of the well, the corsairs urging the two slaves to follow him that all buyers might see and inspect them.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking