“This is it,” Decatur whispered to Henry. “If they don’t go for it, we’re going to be in trouble.”
“They will. Look at us from their perspective. Would you be concerned about this little ketch?”
“No. Probably not.”
The guard captain scratched his beard, eyeing the Intrepid warily, before finally shouting back, “You may tie up, but you must leave at dawn.”
“Thank you. Allah has a special place in His heart for you,” Catalano called out, then switched to English and whispered to the two officers. “They have agreed.”
Lafayette stood at Decatur’s shoulder as the light breeze slowly pushed the Intrepid closer and closer to the side of the Philadelphia. The big frigate’s cannons were run out and the protective tampions removed from the barrels. The nearer they drew, the more the muzzles seemed to grow in size. If the pirates became suspicious, a broadside at this range would turn the ketch into kindling and rip the eighty men aboard to shreds.
Drawing nearer still, the pirates lining the rail were a good fifteen feet above the Intrepid’s deck. They began muttering among themselves and pointing as they made out the shapes of men cowering behind the ketch’s gunwales.
Ten feet still separated the ships when one pirate shouted. “Americanos!”
“Tell your men to attack,” Catalano wailed.
“No order to be obeyed but that of the commanding officer,” Decatur said evenly.
Above them, the Barbary pirates were drawing their swords, and one fumbled with the blunderbuss strapped across his back. A cry went up just as the oak hulls came together, and Decatur shouted, “Board her!”
Henry Lafayette touched the Bible he kept on him at all times and leapt for an open gunport, hooking one hand around the wooden edge and clasping the warm bronze cannon with the other. He kicked his legs through the gap between the gun and the side of the ship and came up on his feet, his blade keening as he drew it from its scabbard. By the light of a single lamp hanging from the low ceiling, he saw two pirates wheeling back from another gunport as more men scrambled aboard. One of the pirates turned and saw him. The pirate’s broad scimitar was suddenly in his hand as his bare feet pounded the decking. He shrieked as he charged, a technique most appropriate when confronting unarmed and untrained merchant sailors.
Henry wasn’t fazed. The fear he had been sure would paralyze him had turned to cold rage.
He let the man come, and as the pirate began a hip-high cutting stroke that would have sliced Henry in half Henry stepped forward lightly and sank his blade into the other man’s chest. The force of the pirate’s charge ran the steel through his ribs and out his back. The heavy scimitar clattered to the deck as the corsair slumped against Lafayette. He had to use his knee as leverage to pull his blade from the pirate’s chest. Henry whirled at a moving shadow and ducked under the swinging arc of an ax aimed at his shoulder. He counter-cut back with his sword, the edge slicing through cloth, skin, and muscle. He hadn’t had the angle to eviscerate his foe, but the amount of blood that gushed from the wound told him the pirate was out of the fight.
The gun deck was a scene out of hell. Dark figures hacked and slashed at one another with abandon. The crash of steel on steel was punctuated by screams of pain when blade met skin. The air was charged with the smell of gunpowder, but above it Henry could detect the coppery scent of blood.
He waded into the fray. With its low ceilings, the gun deck wasn’t an ideal field to battle with a sword or pike, but the Americans fought doggedly. One of them went down when he was struck from behind. Henry saw that the corsair who had hit him towered over everyone else. His turban almost brushed the support beams. He swung his scimitar at Henry, and, when Henry parried, the power of the blow made his entire arm go numb. The Arab swung again, and it took every once of strength for Lafayette to raise his blade enough to deflect the flashing sword.
He staggered back, and the pirate pressed his advantage, swinging wildly, keeping Henry on his back foot and always on the defensive. Decatur had been adamant during their planning that the raid was to be as silent as possible because of the massive pirate armada lying at anchor in the harbor. With his strength quickly waning, Lafayette had no choice but to yank his pistol from the sash around his waist. He pulled the trigger even before he had acquired his target. The small measure of powder in the pan flashed, and as the gun came up the main charge blew with a sharp report. The .58 caliber ball smashed into the pirate’s chest.
The shot would have dropped a normal man to the deck before he had time to blink, but the giant kept coming. Henry had just an instant to raise his sword as the scimitar swiped at him again. His blade saved him from having his arm cut off, but the stunning momentum tossed him bodily across the gun deck. He fell against one of the Philadelphia’s eighteen-pounders. With Decatur’s orders about silence still ringing in his ears, Lafayette fumbled for the lit oil lamp slung in a pouch around his waist and held the flame to the bronze cannon’s touchhole. He could smell the powder charge burning, although the sizzle barely registered above the sounds of the fight still raging across the ship. He kept his body between the great gun and his attacker, trusting that with his years of experience manning naval cannons his timing would be perfect.
The pirate must have sensed his opponent was spent by the way Lafayette just stood there, as if accepting the inevitable. The pirate raised his Saracen sword and started to swing, his body anticipating the resistance of the blade cutting through flesh and bone. Then the American leapt aside. The Arab was too committed to check his swing or to notice the smoke coiling from the back of the cannon. It roared an instant later in a gush of sulfurous smoke.
There were thick hemp lines designed to retard the force of the recoil and keep the gun from careening across the deck, but they still let the cannon rocket back several feet. The butt of the gun hit the pirate square in the groin, shattering his pelvis, crushing his hip joints, and splintering both thighbones. His limp body was flung against a beam, and he collapsed to the deck, folded in half—backward.
Henry took a second to peer out the gunport. The eighteen-pound cannonball had smashed into the fortress across the harbor, and an avalanche of rubble tumbled from the gaping hole.
“Two with one shot. Not bad, mon ami Henri, not bad at all.” It was John Jackson, the big bosun.
“If Captain Decatur asks, it was one of these rotters who fired the gun, eh?”
“That’s what I saw, Mr. Lafayette.”
The cannon going off had acted like a starter’s pistol at the beginning of a race. The Arab pirates abandoned their defense and began rushing for the gunports, leaping and falling into the calm waters of the harbor. Those scrambling up the ladders for the main deck would doubtless run into Decatur and his men.
“Let’s get to work.”
The men returned to the starboard side of the ship where crew-mates aboard the Intrepid were standing by, ready to start passing combustibles up to the raiding party. Followed by Jackson and six others burdened with kegs of black powder, Henry Lafayette descended a ladder, passing crews’ quarters where hammocks still hung from the rafters but all other gear had been scavenged. They dropped lower still, to the orlop deck, the lowest on the frigate, and entered one of the ship’s holds. Most of the naval stores had been taken, but enough remained for the men to start burning the frigate.
They worked quickly. Henry decided where they would lay their fuses, and when they were set he lit them with his oil lamp. The flames grew quickly, much quicker than any of them had anticipated. In an instant, the hold filled with reeking smoke. They started back up, holding their sleeves over their mouths so they could breathe. The ceiling above them suddenly burst into flames with a roar like a cannon blast. John Jackson was knocked off his feet and would have been crushed by a burning timber if Henry hadn’t grabbed one of his legs and dragged him across the rough planking. He helped the bosun up, and they started running, their team at their heels. They had to leap and duck as chunks of
flaming wood continued to crash down from above.
They reached a ladder, and Henry turned, urging his men upward. “Go, go, go, damn you, or we’re going to die down here.”
He followed Jackson’s ponderous rump as a jet of fire raced down the corridor. Henry rammed his shoulder into Jackson’s backside and heaved with everything he had. The two emerged from the hatch, rolling to the side, as a volcanic eruption of flame bellowed up from the hold, hit the ceiling, and spread like an unholy canopy.
They were in a sea of fire. The walls, deck, and ceiling were sheathed in flames, while the smoke was so thick that tears streamed from Henry’s eyes. Running blindly, he and Jackson found the next ladder and emerged on the gun deck. Smoke streamed out the ports, but enough fresh air reached them that for the first time in five minutes they could fill their lungs without coughing.
A small explosion shook the Philadelphia, knocking Henry into John Jackson.
“Let’s go, lad.”
They clambered out one of the ports. Men on the Intrepid were there to help them settle in on the small ketch. Crewmen slapped Henry’s back several times. He thought they were congratulating him on a job well done, but in fact they were putting out the smoldering cloth of his native shirt.
Above them on the rail, Stephen Decatur stood with one boot up on the bulwark.
“Captain,” Lafayette shouted, “lower decks are clear.”
“Very good, Lieutenant.” He waited for a couple of his men to climb down ropes and then descended to his ship.
The Philadelphia was engulfed in fire. Flames shot from her gunports and were starting to climb her rigging. Soon, the heat would be intense enough to cook off the powder charges in her cannons, eight of which were aimed directly at the Intrepid.
The forward line holding the ketch to the frigate was cast off easily enough, but the stern line jammed. Henry pushed men aside and drew his sword. The rope was nearly an inch thick, and his blade, dulled by combat, still sliced it clean with one blow.
With the fire consuming so much air, the ketch couldn’t fill her sails, and the jib was dangerously close to tangling with the Philadelphia ’s burning rigging. The men used oars to try to force their vessel away from the floating pyre, but as soon as they pushed free the conflagration drew them back in again.
Bits of burning sail from the frigate’s mainmast fell like confetti. One sailor’s hair caught fire.
“Henry,” Decatur bellowed, “unship the boat and tow us free.”
“Aye, aye.”
Henry, Jackson, and four others lowered the dinghy. With a line secured to the Intrepid’s bow, they pulled away from the ketch. When the rope came taut, they heaved against the oars, straining to gain inches. When they pulled the paddles from the water for another stroke, half the distance they had gained was lost to the fire-born wind.
“Pull, you sons of dogs,” Henry shouted. “Pull!”
And they did. Heaving against the sixty-four deadweight tons of their ship and the powerful suction of the fire, they fought stubbornly. The men hauled on the oars until the vertebrae crackled in their backs and veins bulged from their necks. They pulled their ship and crew away from the Philadelphia until Decatur could get sails up her mainmast and fill them with the slight breeze now blowing in from the desert.
There was a sudden bloom of light high up on the castle wall. A moment later came the concussive roar of a cannon. The shot landed well beyond the ketch and rowboat, but it was followed by a dozen more. The water came alive with tiny dimples—small-arms fire from lookouts and guards running along the breakwater.
Aboard the Intrepid, men manned the oars, rowing for everything they were worth, while behind them the Philadelphia suddenly flared as the remainder of her canvas caught fire.
For twenty tense minutes, the men pulled while, around them, shot after shot hit the water. One ball passed through the Intrepid’s topgallant sail, but other than that the ship wasn’t struck. The small-arms fire died away first, and then they were beyond the reach of the Bashaw’s cannons. The exhausted men collapsed into each other, laughing and singing. In their wake, the walls of the fortress were lit with the wavering glow of the burning ship.
Henry brought the dinghy about and slipped it under the davits.
“Well done, my friend.” Decatur was smiling, his face reflecting the ethereal glimmer behind them.
Too exhausted to do anything but pant, Henry threw Decatur a weak salute.
All eyes suddenly turned toward the harbor as the raging towers that were the Philadelphia’s masts slowly collapsed across her port side in an explosion of sparks. And then, as a final salute, her guns cooked off, an echoing cannonade that sent some balls across the water and others into the castle walls.
The men roared at her act of defiance against the Barbary pirates.
“What now, Captain?” Lafayette asked,
Decatur stared across the sea, not looking at Henry when he spoke. “This won’t end tonight. I recognized one of the corsairs in the harbor. It was Suleiman Al-Jama’s. She’s called the Saqr. It means falcon. You can bet your last penny that he’s making ready to sail against us this very moment. The Bashaw won’t take vengeance on our captured sailors for what we did tonight—they are too valuable to him—but Al-Jama will want revenge.”
“He was once a holy man, right?”
“Up until a few years ago,” Decatur agreed. “He was what the Muslims called an Imam. Kind of like a priest. Such was his hate for Christendom that he decided preaching wasn’t enough, and he took up arms against any and all ships not flying a Muslim flag.”
“I heard tell that he takes no prisoners.”
“I’ve heard the same. The Bashaw can’t be too happy about that since prisoners can be ransomed, but he holds little sway over Al-Jama. The Bashaw made a deal with the devil when he let Al-Jama occasionally stage out of Tripoli. I’ve also heard he has no end of volunteers to join him when he goes raiding. His men are suicidal in their devotion to him.
“Your rank-and-file Barbary pirate sees what he is doing as a profession, a way to make a living. It is something they’ve been doing for generations. You saw tonight how most of them fled the Philadelphia as soon as we boarded. They weren’t going to get themselves killed in a fight they couldn’t win.
“But Al-Jama’s followers are a different breed altogether. This is a holy calling for them. They even have a word for it: jihad. They will fight to the death if it means they can take one more infidel with them.”
Henry thought about the big pirate who had come at him relentlessly, battling on even after he’d been shot. He wondered if he was one of Al-Jama’s followers. He hadn’t gotten a look at the man’s eyes, but he’d sensed a berserker insanity to the pirate, that somehow killing an American was more important to him than preventing the Philadelphia from being burned.
“Why do you think they hate us?” he asked.
Decatur looked at him sharply. “Lieutenant Lafayette, I have never heard a more irrelevant question in my life.” He took a breath. “But I’ll tell you what I think. They hate us because we exist. They hate us because we are different from them. But, most important, they hate us because they think they have the right to hate us.”
Henry remained silent for a minute, trying to digest Decatur’s answer, but such a belief system was so far beyond him he couldn’t get his mind around it. He had killed a man tonight and yet he hadn’t hated him. He was just doing what he’d been ordered to do. Period. It hadn’t been personal and he couldn’t fathom how anyone could make it so.
“What are your orders, Captain?” he finally asked.
“The Intrepid’s no match for the Saqr, especially as overcrowded as we are. We’ll link up with the Siren as we planned, but rather than return to Malta in convoy I want you and the Siren to stay out here and teach Suleiman Al-Jama that the American Navy isn’t afraid of him or his ilk. Tell Captain Stewart that he is not to fail.”
Henry couldn’t keep the smile off his face.
For two years, they had seen little action, with the exception of capturing the Intrepid and now burning the Philadelphia. He was excited to take the fight to the corsairs directly.
“If we can capture or kill him,” he said, “it will do wonders for our morale.”
“And severely weaken theirs.”
AN HOUR AFTER dawn, the lookout high atop the Siren’s mainmast called down, “Sail! Sail ho! Five points off the starboard beam.”
Henry Lafayette and Lieutenant Charles Stewart, the ship’s captain, had been waiting for this since sunup.
“About damned time,” Stewart said.
At just twenty-five years of age, Stewart had received his commission a month before the Navy was officially established by Congress. He had grown up with Stephen Decatur, and, like him, Stewart was a rising star in the Navy. Shipboard scuttlebutt had it that he would receive a promotion to captain before the fleet returned to the United States. He had a slender build, and a long face with wide-apart, deep-set eyes. He was a firm but fair disciplinarian, and whatever ship he served on was consistently considered lucky by its crew.
Sand in the hourglass drizzled down for ten minutes before the lookout shouted again. “She’s running parallel to the coast.”
Stewart grunted. “Bugger must suspect we’re out here, number one. He’s trying to end around us and then tack after the Intrepid.” He then addressed Bosun Jackson, who was the ship’s sailing master. “Let go all sails.”
Jackson bellowed the order up to the men hanging in the rigging, and in a perfectly choreographed flurry of activity a dozen sails unfurled off the yards and blossomed with the freshening breeze. The foremast and mainmast creaked with the strain as the two-hundred-and-forty-ton ship started carving through the Mediterranean.
Stewart glanced over the side at the white water streaming along the ship’s oak hull. He estimated their speed at ten knots, and knew they would do another five in this weather.
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