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It was a very temporary display of force. Five years later Sir John Narborough, instead of bombarding, was meekly paying sixty thousand "pieces of eight" to the Algerines for slaves and presents. In 1681 Admiral Herbert, afterwards Lord Torrington, executed various amicable cruises against the Algerines.
"Doubtless," said the Doctor; "but many permissions were given to them which were local and temporary; for if we hold them to apply to the human race, the Turks might quote the Bible for making slaves of us, if they could, and the Algerines have the Scripture all on their side, and our own blacks, at some future time, if they can get the power, might justify themselves in making slaves of us."
Then Sakr-el-Bahr found means to conduct Pitt to Genoa, and there put him aboard an English vessel. Three months later he received an answer a letter from Pitt, which reached him by way of Genoa which was at peace with the Algerines, and served then as a channel of communication with Christianity.
The only adventure of the voyage was the discovery of an Algerine pirate ship floating keel uppermost; it righted suddenly under the stress of ropes from the Norham Castle, and the ghastly and intolerable dead Algerines and Spaniards could not scare the British sailors eager for loot; at last the battered hulk was cast loose, and its blackness was seen reeling slowly off "into the most gorgeous and lavish sunset in the world."
The result of this smart seamanship was an instant disaster for the Algerines; their galleys were all sunk before they could make the few strokes of the oar which would have brought them alongside, and tremendous broadsides of grapeshot from the Queen Charlotte and the Leander shattered the entire flotilla, and in a moment covered the surface of the harbour with the bodies of their crews and with a few survivors attempting to swim from destruction.
A few weeks after the peace was announced, Captain Jones with his officers and crew was ordered to repair to the seaboard, and again to take command of the Macedonian, to form part of the force against the Algerines, then depredating on our commerce in the Mediterranean.
He was threatened with impalement and with torture; and as cutting off ears and noses were playful freaks with the Algerines, it may be conceived what their tortures were like; but nothing could make him swerve from his original statement that he and he alone was responsible.
He had insulted even the pope himself by sending an ambassador to Rome, with guards and armed attendants equal to an army, in order to enforce some privileges which it was not for the interest or the dignity of the pope to grant; he had encouraged the invasion of Germany by the Turks; he had seized Strasburg, the capital of Alsace; he bombarded Genoa, because they sold powder to the Algerines, and compelled the doge to visit him as a suppliant; he laid siege to some cities which belonged to Spain; and he prepared to annex the Low Countries to his dominions.
The captains, too, have their private artificer slaves, whom they buy for high prices and take with them on the cruise, and hire them out to help the Beylik workmen when ashore. The number of vessels possessed at any one time by the Algerines appears to have never been large. Barbarossa and Dragut were content with small squadrons. Ochiali had but fifteen Algerine galleys at Lepanto.
By proper management, and a due attention to time and circumstances, a peace might be procured with money. Nations possessing a naval force greatly superior to the proposed armament, had found it to their advantage to purchase the friendship of the Algerines. That mode of procuring peace was recommended both by its efficacy, and its economy.
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