Sometimes, by way of variety, they would throw their captives into dungeons and then notify the governments to which they belonged that they would be set free upon the payment of a large sum of money to their captors.

If the government did not choose to pay the ransom, why their captors would give themselves the pleasure of putting the prisoners to death.
Now, it would have been an easy thing for any one of the Christian nations interested to send a fleet into the Mediterranean, which, speaking figuratively, would have wiped those miscreants off the face of the earth; but such an enterprise would have cost a good deal of money, so, instead of punishing the wretches as they deserved, the countries paid them a yearly sum of money on their promise not to disturb vessels when they ran across them.
So it was that, year after year, we sent a good round gift to those barbarians.

You know our Government is often slow in meeting its obligations, and it happened now and then we were late in sending our tribute to the swarthy rulers.

When that occurred, the Dey, or Bashaw, imposed a heavy fine to remind us of the expense of trifling with him.
We meekly bowed our heads, paid it, and tried to be more prompt afterward.

Then, too, the mighty ruler sometimes expressed a wish to receive naval stores instead of money, and we were happy to oblige him.
Of course, he set his own valuation on what he received, which was generally about one-half of what they cost our Government, but we made no complaint.
It came about that the Dey of Tripoli got the idea into his head that we were not paying him as much as we did his neighbors.