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Four days later the Grand Vezīr Ayās, with twenty-five thousand more and a brilliant staff, joined the first-comers, and the Akinji or light troops spread fire and sword around. A fifty-pounder fired nineteen shots in three days, but only five struck the fortress: the Turks fired too high, and many of their missiles fell harmlessly into the sea beyond.
Head of the family of Toptani of Tirana, he was known to be very ambitious, and was therefore employed by the Turkish Government, who thought it safer to make a friend than a foe of him. His elder brother, Gani Bey, had been murdered in Constantinople some years earlier, by a son of the Grand Vezir by order, it was said, of Abdul Hamid.
Accordingly in March of that year he secretly led his army against Santarem, one of the strongest of the Moorish cities standing high above the Tagus on an isolated hill. The vezir, Abu-Zakariah, was surprised before he could provision the town, so that the garrison were able to offer but a feeble resistance, and the Christians entered after the attack had lasted only a few days.
"Very well," said he; "wait to-day, and to-morrow thou shalt go with my vezir." The next day they set out, taking the children with them, and an escort lest they should be attacked on the way. They stopped at sunset, and passed the night on the road. The vezir said to the guards, "Watch that we be not taken, if the robbers should come to seize us." They guarded the tent.
She answered: "Stay here, and pass the night. We will give thee a dinner and will question thee." When the sun had set she said to the servant, "Go, bring the dinner, that the guests may eat." When they had eaten she said to the King, "Tell me your story." He answered: "My story is long. My wife went away in the company of a trusted vezir.
It is hard to remember that almost at the very time when German and Spanish and Italian men-at-arms were outraging and slaughtering helpless, innocent people in Tunis, who had taken little or no hand in Kheyr-ed-dīn's wars and had accepted his authority with reluctance, the Grand Vezīr Ibrahīm was entering Baghdād and Tebrīz as a conqueror at the head of wild Asiatic troops, and not a house nor a human being was molested.
Let us hear it." "I will return in a moment," said the vezir, for he feared her. But the King cut off his head. The next day he assembled the council of the village, and his wife said, "Forgive me and let me go, for I am a woman." Two Souafa were brothers. Separating one day one said to the other: "O my brother, let us marry thy son with my daughter."
Many a Serb and Montenegrin flying from blood-vengeance, many a Slav criminal flying from Austrian justice, refuged in Turkish territory and turned Moslem. Nor when, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Serbs struck for independence did Bosnia join them. The Slav Vezir and the Pashas of Bosnia led great armies against them. By then the whole situation had changed, however.
"I'll kill you if you refuse." She asked for delay, time to say her prayers. She prayed to God, the Master of all worlds, and said: "O God, save me from the vezir." The Master of the worlds heard her prayer. He gave her the wings of a bird, and she flew up in the sky. At dawn she alighted in a great city, and met a man upon the roadside.
Suleymān the Magnificent saw the necessity of combination; he knew that Kheyr-ed-dīn could teach the Stambol navigators and ship-builders much that they ought to learn; his Grand Vezīr Ibrahīm strenuously urged a closer relation between the Turkish powers of the east and west; and Kheyr-ed-dīn received the Imperial command to present himself at Constantinople. See The Story of Turkey, 136.