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But against this was the declaration of Dragut, who represented to his following that there was really no choice in the matter; that to these stiffnecked and singularly ungrateful people he had offered the protection of the corsairs, that they had refused in the most contumelious manner, and in consequence there was nothing for it but the strong hand.
Doria gave up the captive Dragut to his old captain for a ransom of three thousand gold crowns a transaction on which he afterwards looked back with unqualified regret. The situation was growing daily more unpleasant for France.
Are ye the fearless sea-hawks that have flown with me, and struck where the talons of my grappling-hooks were flung, or are ye but scavenging crows?" He was answered by an old rover whom fear had rendered greatly daring. "We are trapped here as Dragut was trapped at Jerba." "Thou liest," he answered. "Dragut was not trapped, for Dragut found a way out.
Had they but known their man a little better, their uneasiness would have been far greater than their joy at his temporary absence. Those things desired by Dragut which he could not obtain by fair means he usually seized by the strong hand; and when he left so hurriedly, and at the same time so unostentatiously, he had already entered into a plot with Ibrahim Amburac.
The expedition assembled, the Duke took it to Malta, where it wintered, and in the spring it sailed and attacked Tripoli. They found this fortress, however, in a very different state from that which they expected. Dragut, says De Vertot, "avoit faire terasser les murailles de cette place."
Doria saw he had his enemy in a trap, and was in no hurry to venture in among the shoals and narrows of the strait. He sent joyous messages to Europe, announcing his triumph, and cautiously, as was his habit, awaited events. Dragut, for his part, dared not push out against a vastly superior force; his only chance was a ruse.
A man less able, less determined, than Dragut, might well have despaired; but he brought to bear on the problem with which he was confronted all the subtlety of his nature, all the resourcefulness of the born seaman that he was.
There remained for an appreciable period after he had spoken a tense silence; the red light from the burning houses shone on the lean faces alight with the fierce fire of fanaticism, with an inextinguishable lust of slaughter. There came an answering frenetic roar, "Lead! Lead! Dragut! Dragut! Dragut!" It was enough: the corsair had tried the temper of the steel, he had now but to use the edge.
Ah, fortune's targe and butt was he, On whom were rained the strokes from hate From love that had not found its goal, From strange vicissitudes of fate. A galley-slave of Dragut he, Who once had pulled the laboring oar, Now, 'mid a garden's leafy boughs, He worked and wept in anguish sore.
Don Juan de Vega put his son Don Alvaro in command of the city and set out in search of Dragut with twenty galleys, but the sea leaves no traces by which a fugitive can be tracked, and his search proved as fruitless as had been that of Doria in the previous year.
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