This line extended along the south toward the Straits of Gibraltar, and on its northern side reached to France.
The doctor had seen their counterpart in all the islands of the western Mediterranean, on the coasts of Naples and in Sicily.

They were the fortifications of a thousand-year war, of a struggle ten centuries long between Moors and Christians for the domination of the blue sea, a struggle of piracy in which the Mediterranean men--differentiated by religion, but identical at heart--had prolonged the adventures of the Odyssey down to the beginnings of the nineteenth century.
Ferragut gradually became acquainted with many old men of the village who in their youth had been slaves in Algiers.

On winter evenings the oldest of them were still singing romances of captivity and speaking with terror of the Berber brigantines.

These thieves of the sea must have had a pact with the devil, who notified them of opportune occasions.

If in a convent some beautiful novices had just made their profession, the doors would give away at midnight under the hatchet-blows of the bearded demons who were advancing inland from the galleys prepared to receive their cargo of feminine freight.