Page:Dramatic Moments in American Diplomacy (1918).djvu/135

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IN AMERICAN DIPLOMACY
115

cealed pleasure to operating his guns, by lunch time the outraged monarch signed the treaty.

After the squadron left, the shrewd old sinner of course concluded that he had made a grave mistake in ever leaving his former graft. So he cooked up an excuse, drew his flotilla around him, and forthwith dispatched the diplomatic paper given at the beginning of this chapter.

Further diplomatic discourse was interrupted by the arrival of Lord Exmouth with a British fleet of twenty sail. The Dey had come to believe his own description of his powers, and had put the British Consul in jail. And without any preliminaries the Admiral opened twenty broadsides on the towers of Algiers, and knocked the place into a rubbish heap.

After the receipt of fifty-one thousand round shot the Dey came out and swept the ground with his beard, opened up his jails, and turned cynic. One immediate consequence was his signature to a paper tendered him by Commodore Chaunccy, U. S. N., reading as follows: