Bruce, neither intimidated nor convinced by the savage eloquence of the dey, again remonstrated; upon which he was disowned as consul, his dragoman was taken from him, and he was ordered to quit the country in three days. "In reply," says Bruce, "I begged the dey to excuse me if I considered myself still as British consul, and if I denied it to be in the power of any foreign prince to annul my commission." An English ship happening to arrive about this time with a passavant, was broken in pieces, and the crew hurried into slavery. Bruce now prepared to embark, but the storm suddenly subsided. The unruly passions of the dey, though deaf to reason, had listened to the subtle admonitions of his officers, who explained to him the ruinous consequences of a war with England. Regular printed passports arrived, and "thus ended," says Bruce, "an affair the least pleasing, the least profitable, and one of the most dangerous in which I was ever engaged."
In communicating intelligence of his own dismissal, and of the above proceedings of the dey to Lord Halifax, Bruce again recommended that the remedy of force, that actual cautery, should be applied; and always ready to share in every service of danger which he conceived it his duty to propose, he offered to return with any expedition against the place. "I shall always esteem it," he says, "an honour to venture my life in his majesty's service, without rank or reward, in the station he shall be pleased to employ me."
Considerable time elapsed before Bruce received from England any reply to his communications from Algiers; and but little notice was taken of the request which he had so repeatedly made for leave of absence to visit Tunis and the interior. In the months of November and December, 1764, he thus addressed Lord Halifax:
November 3.--"I take the liberty, my lord, to offer your lordship my most humble thanks for having laid my request of leave to resign this consulship before the king. Very disagreeable and dangerous as my situation is, if his majesty or your lordship think that it is more for the advantage of the service that I should remain till these disputes are settled, rather than that they should be taken up by my successor, I am entirely at his majesty's disposal, only I hope that some resolution may be speedily taken for the safety of commerce and of the king's servants. I beg leave to remind your lordship of my request, that before my resignation I might have permission to visit Tunis and some other places in the inland country. My absence will not exceed three months, and his majesty's affairs here will be perfectly safe, and well conducted during that time by Mr. Forbes, my vice-consul."