ple, to go on a mule to try once again to buy them back. How this suited the Captain of the Bonhomme Richard is not recorded—except that he died immediately, before he started.
Meantime, half the wretched victims also had died, and the rest sent a plea to their country that would have melted a stone Moloch. In 1793, the Dey had a banner year. He gathered in a hundred and five more American citizens.
The utter futility of diplomatic action with these gentry had one obvious and beneficial result. Public opinion in the country would no longer stand such a pitiful attitude. And when the patriarch of these enslaved mariners from Boston wrote, "Your Excellency will perceive, that the United States has at present no alternative, than to fit out with the greatest expedition thirty frigates and corsairs in order to stop those sea robbers in capturing American vessels," the navy of the United States was born. In 1794 Congress author-
