Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/361

Rh CHAPTER XXV.

THE COMING STRUGGLE LOOMS ON THE HORIZON.

barbarians of Barbary had roused the wrath of England to an extreme pitch in consequence of a deed which did not, indeed, much excel their wonted atrocities, but which, being on a large scale, and very public, had attracted unusual attention—all the more that, about the same time, the European nations, having killed as many of each other as they thought advisable for that time, were comparatively set free to attend to so-called minor affairs.

The deed referred to was to the effect that on the 23d of May 1816 the crews of the coral fishing boats at Bona—about 200 miles eastward of Algiers—landed to attend mass on Ascension Day. They were attacked, without a shadow of reason or provocation, by Turkish troops, and massacred in cold blood.

Previous to this Lord Exmouth had been on the Barbary coast making treaties with these corsairs, in which he had been to some extent successful. He