One day, one of the most famous and cruel corsairs of Tripoli, named Kemal-Reis, came near perishing with his galley, which ran aground on the Coast a short distance from the house of Pog.
Pog was just returning from one of his voyages. Recognising the galley of Kemal-Reis, he set sail toward her, and rendered her the most efficient aid.
One of Pog’s slaves reported later that he had heard him say, “Man would be too happy if all the wolves and tigers were destroyed.” So the saving of Kemal-Reis, dreaded for reason of his cruelties, was due to the bitter misanthropy of Pog. Instead of yielding to an impulse of natural generosity, he desired to preserve to humanity one of its most terrible scourges.
A short time after this event Kemal-Reis visited the isolated house of the Frenchman, and, by degrees, a sort of intimacy was established between the pirate and the misanthrope.
One day the newsmongers of Tripoli learned with astonishment that Pog had embarked on board the galley of Kemal-Reis. They supposed the Frenchman to be very rich, and that he had freighted the Tripolitan vessel in order to take a voyage of pleasure on the coast of Barbary and Egypt and Syria.
To the great astonishment of the public, Kemal-Reis returned a month after his departure, with his galley filled with French slaves, captured from the coasts of Languedoc and Provence, and the rumour was current in Tripoli that the favourable results of this audacious enter-prise were owing to the information and advice given by Pog, who knew better than any one else the weak points on the seashore of France. This rumour soon acquired such probability that our consul at Tripoli deemed it his duty to inform against Pog, and to instruct the ministers of Louis XIII. of what had happened.
And here we make the statement, once for all, that in 1610, as well as in 1630 and in 1700, the abduction of inhabitants from our coasts by the regencies of Barbary was almost never considered a cause for a declaration of war against these powers. Our consuls assisted at the disembarking of the captives and generally acted as mediators for their ransom.
If any measures were taken against Pog, it was because he had, as a Frenchman, assisted with his own hand in an attack upon his country.
The information given by the consul was in vain, to the great scandal of our compatriots and of Europeans established at Tripoli. Pog made a solemn abjuration, renounced the cross, assumed the turban, and henceforth remained unmolested.
Kemal-Reis had everywhere proclaimed that the new renegade was one of the best captains whom he had ever known, and that the regency of Barbary could not have made a more useful acquisition. From that moment Pog-Reis equipped a galley and directed his operations solely against French vessels, and especially against the galleys of Malta, commanded by the chevaliers of our nation. Several times he ravaged the coasts of Languedoc and Provence with impunity. It must be said, however, that this fury for plunder and destruction only seized Pog, so to speak, periodically, and by paroxysms, and his rage seemed to reach its height about the end of the month of December.