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She lay within short range of the guns on the castle, on the mole-head, and in the New Fort; and close aboard rode three Tripolitan cruisers and twenty gun-boats and galleys. To meet and overcome this force Decatur had a few small guns and seventy men, but these were hearts of oak, tried in many a desperate undertaking, and burning now to redeem their country's honour.
Fortunately, the American squadron succeeded about this time in capturing a Tripolitan gunboat, which would serve admirably to disguise the purpose of the Americans. Preble then told Lieutenant Decatur of the suggestion made by Bainbridge. No sooner was the young lieutenant acquainted with the plan than he volunteered to lead in the perilous enterprise.
Adams's Tripolitan treaty that the government of the United States was "not in any sense founded on the Christian religion," and Paine could find few admirers in any class. Mr. Jefferson, too, was well aware that the old man was broken, that the fire had gone out of him, and that his presence in the United States could be of no use whatever to the party.
In a general attack upon the Tripolitan gunboats, Decatur laid his ship alongside one of the enemy, grappled with her and boarded. Decatur was the first over the side and a desperate hand-to-hand combat followed. The pirate captain, a gigantic fellow, soon met Decatur face to face, and stood on tiptoe to deal him a tremendous blow with his scimitar.
The watchword was "Philadelphia," which they were to use in the darkness. The Americans formed a line from one side of the ship to the other, and, with Decatur as leader, swept everything before them on the main deck. On the gun deck, Lawrence and McDonough did the same thing. In fifteen minutes, every Tripolitan had been cut down or driven overboard.
On the last day of October, 1803, Captain Bainbridge observed a Tripolitan vessel trying to make port. He gave chase, but the coast was dangerous, abounding with shoals and reefs, with which the fugitive vessel was familiar, while Captain Bainbridge had to keep sounding and regulating his speed in accordance with the degree of danger.
Here we halted; it was time to turn back. There was an indentation in the rocks near at hand, fretted away by hungry floods of the past and overhung, now, with creepers and drooping fernery, concerning which my Tripolitan companion told me a long and complicated legend. This shadowy hollow, he explained, was the bridal couch, in olden days, of an earthly maiden and her demon-lover.
Late in October Bainbridge sighted a Tripolitan vessel standing in shore. He gave chase at once with perhaps more zeal than discretion, following his quarry well in shore in the hope of disabling her before she could make the harbor. Failing to intercept the corsair, he went about and was heading out to sea when the frigate ran on an uncharted reef and stuck fast.
The Tripolitan War did not end in a blaze of glory for the United States. It had been waged in the spirit of "not a cent for tribute"; it was concluded with a thinly veiled payment for peace; and, worst of all, it did not prevent further trouble with the Barbary States.
In all her service, not one commanding officer was ever lost, and few of her crew were ever killed. On one occasion, six of our gunboats made a savage hand to hand attack on twenty-one Tripolitan gunboats, and drove them back into the harbor with great loss.
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