James Decatur, having got well up with one of the largest of the Tripolitan vessels, delivered so quick and telling a fire with his long gun and musketry that the enemy immediately struck his colors. He hauled alongside and clambered up and over the side of the gunboat to take possession of her personally. As his head came up above the rail his men saw the Turkish commander rush forward and aim his boarding-pistol at the defenceless American. The bullet struck him fairly in the forehead, and Decatur, with barely a sound, sank back into his boat.
In their horror at the treachery of the Tripolitan, the Americans allowed the boat to sheer off, and the Turk, getting out his sweeps, was soon speeding away toward the protection of the batteries.
Stephen Decatur, towing his prize to safety, had noted the gallant attack, and had seen the striking of the Turkish colors. But not until an American boat darted alongside of him did he hear the news of the treacherous manner of his brother’s death. The shock of the information for the moment appalled him, but in the place of his grief there arose so fierce a rage at the dastardly act that for a moment he was stricken dumb and senseless. His men sprang quickly when at last he thundered out his orders. Deftly casting off the tow-line of the prize, they hoisted all sail and jumped to their sweeps as though their lives depended on it. Macdonough’s gun-crew were loading with solid shot this time, and, as soon as they got the range, a ball went screaming down towards the fleeing Tripolitan. The men at the sweeps needed little encouragement. They had heard the news, and they loved James Decatur as they worshipped his brother, who stood aft, his lips compressed, anxiously watching the chase. The water boiled under the oar-blades as the clumsy hulk seemed to spring from one wave-crest to another. Again the long gun spoke, and the canister struck the water all about the Turkish vessel. The Tripolitans seemed disorganized, for their oars no longer moved together and the blades were splashing wildly. Another solid shot went flying, and Decatur smiled as he saw the spray fly up under the enemy’s counter. There would be no mercy for the Tripolitans that day. Nearer and nearer they came, until the Turks, seeing that further attempts at flight were useless, dropped their sweeps and prepared to receive the Americans. They shifted their helm so that their gun could bear, and the shot that followed tore a great rent in Decatur’s foresail. But the Americans heeded it little more than if it had been a puff of wind, and pausing only to deliver another deadly discharge of the musket-balls at point-blank range, Decatur swung in alongside under cover of the smoke.
As the vessels grated together, Decatur jumped for the Tripolitan rigging, and, followed by his men, quickly gained the deck. Two Turks rushed at Decatur, aiming vicious blows with their scimetars; but he parried them skilfully with his pike, looking around him fiercely the while for the captain. As he thought of his brother dying, or dead, he swore that no American should engage the Turkish commander but himself. He had not long to wait. They espied each other at about the same moment, and brushing the intervening weapons aside, dashed upon each other furiously.
Decatur was tall, and as active as a cat. His muscles were like steel, and his rage seemed to give him the strength of a dozen. But the Mussulman was a giant, the biggest man in the Tripolitan fleet, and a very demon in power and viciousness. So strong was he, that as Decatur lunged at him with his boarding-pike he succeeded in wrenching it from the hand of the American, and so wonderfully quick that Decatur had hardly time to raise his cutlass to parry the return. He barely caught it; but in doing so his weapon broke off short at the hilt. The next lunge he partially warded by stepping to one side; but the pike of the Mussulman in passing cut an ugly wound in his arm and chest. Entirely defenceless, he now knew that his only chance was at close quarters, so he sprang in below the guard of the Turk and seized him around the waist, hoping to trip and stun him. But the Tripolitan tore the arms away as though he had been a stripling, and, seizing him by the throat, bore him by sheer weight to the deck, trying the while to draw a yataghan. The American crew, seeing things going badly with their young captain, fought in furiously, and in a moment the mass of Americans and Tripolitans were fighting in one desperate, struggling, smothering heap, above the prostrate bodies of their captains, neither of whom could succeed in drawing a weapon. The Turk was the first to get his dagger loose, but the American’s death-like grasp held his wrist like a vise, and kept him from striking the blow. Decatur saw another Turk just beside him raise his yataghan high above his head, and he felt that he was lost. But at this moment a sailor, named Reuben James, who loved Decatur as though he were a brother, closed in quickly and caught on his own head the blow intended for Decatur. Both his arms had been disabled, but he asked nothing better than to lay down his life for his captain.
In the meanwhile, without relinquishing his grip upon the Turk, Decatur succeeded in drawing a pistol from the breast of his shirt, and, pressing the muzzle near the heart of the Tripolitan, fired. As the muscles of his adversary relaxed, the American managed to get upon one knee, and so to his feet, stunned and bleeding, but still unsubdued. The Tripolitans, disheartened by the loss of their leader, broke ground before the force of the next attack and fled overboard or were cut down where they stood.
The death of James Decatur was avenged.
The other Tripolitan gunboats had scurried back to safety, so Decatur, with his two prizes, made his way out towards the flagship unmolested. His victory had cost him dearly. There was not a man who had not two or three wounds from the scimetars, and some of them had cuts all over the body. The decks were like a slaughter-pen and the scuppers were running blood. But the bodies of the Tripolitans were ruthlessly cast overboard to the sharks; and by the time the Americans had reached the “Constitution” the decks had been scrubbed down and the wounded bandaged and roughly cared for by those of their comrades who had fared less badly.
Decatur, by virtue of his exploit in destroying the “Philadelphia,” already a post-captain at the age of twenty-five, could expect no further immediate honors at the hands of the government; but then, as ever afterwards, he craved nothing but a stanch ship and a gallant crew. The service he could do his country was its own reward.
A DOUBLE ENCOUNTER
The old “Constitution” was out on the broad ocean again! And when the news went forth that she had succeeded for the seventh time in running the blockade of the British squadrons, deep was the chagrin of the Admiralty. This Yankee frigate, still stanch and undefeated, had again and again proved herself superior to everything afloat that was British; had shown her heels, under Hull’s masterly seamanship, to a whole squadron during a chase that lasted three days; and had under Hull, and then under Bainbridge, whipped both the “Guerriere” and the “Java,” two of their tidiest frigates, in an incredibly short time, with a trifling loss both in men and rigging. She was invincible; and the title which she had gained before Tripoli, under Commodore Preble, when the Mussulman shot had hailed against her oaken timbers and dropped harmlessly into the sea alongside, seemed more than ever to befit her. “Old Ironsides” was abroad again, overhauled from royal to locker, with a crew of picked seamen and a captain who had the confidence of the navy and the nation.
Her hull had been made new, her canvas had come direct from the sail-lofts at Boston, and her spars were the stanchest that the American forests could afford. She carried thirty-one long 24-pounders and twenty short 32-pounders, – fifty-one guns in all, throwing six hundred and forty-four pounds of actual weight of metal to a broadside. Her officers knew her sailing qualities, and she was ballasted to a nicety, bowling along in a top-gallant-stu’n-sail breeze at twelve knots an hour.
The long list of her victories over their old-time foe had given her men a confidence in the ship and themselves that attained almost the measure of a faith; and, had the occasion presented itself, they would have been as willing to match broadsides with a British seventy-four as with a frigate of equal metal with themselves. They were a fine, hearty lot, these jack-tars; and, as “Old Ironsides” left the green seas behind and ploughed her bluff nose boldly through the darker surges of the broad Atlantic, they vowed that the frigate’s last action would not be her least. The “Constitution” would not be dreaded by the British in vain.
For dreaded she was among the officers of the British North Atlantic squadron. As soon as it was discovered by the British Admiralty that she had passed the blockade, instructions were