I was no merchant, and afraid of neither; I had stated the thing as it was constantly, and one day when a few of these pirates had come home in disappointment at meeting nothing but what was covered by these passavants, crossing me in the street, one of them, drunk, I suppose, fired a large horse pistol directly in my face at the distance of sixteen yards. It was loaded with slugs, one of which cut the loop where my hat was buttoned, another cut the skin of my eyelid, and a third wounded me slightly in the left arm. Government seized the unhappy beast and would have put him to death, had I not saved him by the trouble of some application and interest, and even a little expense.
It was no vain boast on the part of Bruce that his intercession had saved this man’s life. Monsieur Laugier de Tassy, in his ‘Histoire du Royaume d’Alger,’ published at Amsterdam in 1727, gives the following account of what happened to another unhappy wretch who had insulted a British Consul, and there is little doubt that if Barbary justice had been left to take its course this man would have fared no better.
‘In 1716 Mr. Thomas Thompson, British Consul, going to the Assembly Rooms of the ship captains, met on the pier a young Moor, who, it is generally believed, was drunk. The pier is very narrow, and much rain having fallen, the passage was by no means easy. The Moor would not make way for the Consul, but began to quarrel and even pushed him. The Consul asked him whether he wished to throw him off the pier, adding that he thought it rather impertinent of him not to turn aside. The Moor answered that it was well for a Christian to wish to pass before him, and at the same time seized the Consul, boxed his ears, tripped him over, threw him on the ground and placed his knee on his stomach. The Captain of the Port, having witnessed this scene from a distance, came forward and threatened the Moor, who thought it better not to wait for him and ran away. The Captain took the Consul to the house where the captains met, to console him and to repair the disorder he was in. The Admiral expressed his regret at what had happened. He told him he would report the matter to the Dey, and the Moor would soon be punished for his crime. The Admiral had great regard for the family of this young man, for his father was a friend of his and an honest merchant. When, therefore, he had laid the whole affair before the Dey, he begged him not to condemn the man to death, as he deserved, as he belonged to a respectable family, and that drink, to which he had been tempted by libertines, had been the cause of his crime. The Dey answered that he deserved to be hanged, but that out of regard for him he would be pardoned. As an example, however, and for the sake of the insulted Consul, it was necessary to punish the wretch; the Dey therefore asked the Admiral to choose the kind of punishment he liked. The Admiral chose the bastinado, and the Dey said to him, “Out of regard for thee I will spare him.” The Consul soon after arrived. The Dey, seeing him, said, “Consul, I am doing what you desire. I am sorry for what has happened to you, but you shall have justice; remain there.” He gave orders at the same time to the Moorish Bach-Chaouch to bring the accused before him. As he had not hidden himself, he was soon found and brought before the Dey, who, in great anger, said to him, “Wretch, what hast thou done?”—“I have beaten a Christian, a dog who wanted to be more than myself, and who insulted me.” The Dey, enraged at his arrogance, said, “Is it true that you have treated the British Consul in such and such a way?”—“Yes, my Lord,” he answered. “Is it worth sending for me for such a trifle?” Then the Dey, furious, cried out, “That is enough,” and pronounced sentence, which was that he should receive 2,200 stripes. This was done at once, in the presence of the Consul. He received 100 blows on the soles of the feet, so that his feet were taken off as far as the ankles, or held on by so little that Mehemed Effendi Khasnadar drew his knife and cut the skin by which they hung. As further blows would have caused death, and as the Dey was anxious that he should suffer well before such a thing happened, he gave orders to conduct him to prison, so that he might regain strength. The following day, at nine in the morning, the Dey sent for the British Consul, and also for the prisoner, who there and then received the remaining 1,200 blows on his back, which was so cut up that he lost both speech and breath. But, as he was not yet dead, the Dey ordered him to be taken back to prison, and to be shut up there alone, and without help. This was done, and the poor wretch was suffered to die of pain, hunger, and thirst.’
To resume however Bruce’s narrative:—
This dispassionate behaviour reconciled all the soldiery to me, already well-inclined to a man as to personal friendship. I gave Government a long detail of the situation of their affairs, without fear or disguise; I begged them to send out a man of some knowledge and dignity in business, who with me might go through the treaties, renew them, and make them intelligible, who might bring out new Mediterranean passes, a thing to be done in a very short time, after which I was satisfied that things would be settled on a peaceable and permanent footing. I claimed the King’s promise to be allowed to appoint a man, who had nothing to do but to sign the passports, while I made the excursions into Africa, which were the object of my voyage, for which I was fully prepared, and wished to defer no longer.
I received an answer that His Majesty commanded me to stay, till an Ambassador should be sent, to explain and settle the matter and the disputes with the Dey of Algiers. At the same time it said, slightly enough, that it undoubtedly was the King’s wish I might continue at Algiers; but since I did not choose it, His Majesty was resolved, that these places should not be sinecures, and therefore another Consul would be sent over, unless I certified my resolution to stay in course.
This mandate, which was a direct breach of the faith of Government, filled me with indignation.
· · · · · · ·
A relative of my own, a Captain C———,[9] son to the Secretary of the Admiralty, a man that I knew much better than those that sent him, came as the King’s representative to Algiers, and brought with him a city attorney,[10] that had somehow or other connected himself by marriage with the family of Egerton, as Consul.
None of them understood a word of the language, none of them a word of sense; they quarrelled from the beginning, and the Ambassador privately engaged the Dey to send the Consul home again by the end of the year, when he would bring out another and new presents from the King.