and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the ship which is certain to
float, the waters may close over and engulf her, or perchance she may be
towed back to that haven of obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there
in silence and neglect. There is excitement in the breast of one man
alone--to wit, the author. If his book possesses one supreme qualification
she will escape the fate mentioned, and this qualification is--interest. As
the weeks lengthened into months, and these multiplied themselves to the
tale of something like twenty-four, the conviction was strengthened that
that which had so profoundly interested the writer, would not be altogether
indifferent to others. For some inscrutable reason the deeds of sea-robbers
have always possessed a fascination denied to those of their more numerous
brethren of the land; and in the case of the Sea-wolves of the sixteenth
century we are dealing with the very aristocrats of the profession.
Circumstances over which they had no control flung the Moslem population of
Southern Spain on to the shores of Northern Africa: to revenge themselves
upon the Christian foe by whom this expropriation had been accomplished was
natural to a warrior race; and those who heretofore had been land-folk pure
and simple took to piracy as a means of livelihood. It is of the deeds of
these men that this book treats; of their marvellous triumphs, of their
apparently hopeless defeats, of the manner in which they audaciously
maintained themselves against the principalities and the powers of
Christendom always hungering for their destruction.

The quality which Napoleon is said to have ascribed to the British
Infantry, "of never knowing when they were beaten," seems to have also
characterised the Sea-wolves; as witness the marvellous recuperation of
Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa when expelled from Tunis by Charles V.; and the
escape of Dragut from the island of Jerba when apparently hopelessly
trapped by the Genoese admiral, Andrea Doria. All through their history the
leaders of the Sea-wolves show the resourcefulness of the real seamen that