In Destiny's Clutch

Chapter VI: That Impudent Genoese

IT was some months ere Dragut learned the true inwardness of Messer Brancaleone’s conduct.

He had the story from a Genoese captive, captain of a carack which the corsair scuttled in the Straits of Messina. The fellow’s name chanced to be Brancaleone, upon learning which Dragut inquired if he were kin to one Ottavio Brancaleone, who had gone to Spain with the admiral’s granddaughter.

“He is my cousin,” the man answered. And Dragut now learned that in the teeth of the opposition of the whole Doria family, the irrepressible Brancaleone had carried off Madonna Amelia. The admiral had news of it as he was putting to sea, and it was in pursuit not only of Dragut, but also of the runagates, that he had come south so far as Jerbah, having reason more than to suspect that they were aboard one of Dragut’s galleys. The admiral had sworn to hang Brancaleone from his yardarm ere he returned to port, and his bitterness at the trick Dragut had played him was increased by the reflection that Brancaleone, too, had got clear away.

Dragut was very thoughtful when he heard that story. “And to think,” said he, “that I paid that unconscionable dog fifteen hundred ducats and gave him my best galley manned by two hundred Christian slaves for rendering himself as great a service as ever he was rendering me!”

He bore no malice, however. On the contrary, his admiration grew for that impudent Genoese, the only Christian who had ever bested Dragut in a bargain, and if he had a regret it was that so shrewd a spirit should abide in the body of an infidel. “In the service of Islam,” he was wont to say, “such a man as Brancaleone might have gone far indeed. But Allah is all-knowing.”