Commodore Preble heard it all through with strict attention. When Somers had finished, the commodore looked him fixedly in the eye, and said:
“But suppose for one moment the explosion should fail, the ketch should be captured, and a hundred barrels of gunpowder should fall into the hands of the Bashaw? That would prolong the war a year.”
“Have no fear, sir,” answered Somers calmly. “I promise you that, rather than permit such a thing, I myself will fire the ‘infernal,’ if there is no alternative but capture. And I will take no man with me who is not willing to die before suffering so much powder to be captured and used against our own squadron.”
“Are you willing, Captain Somers, to take that responsibility?”
“Perfectly willing, sir. It is no greater responsibility than my friend Captain Decatur assumed when in that very ketch he risked the lives of himself and sixty-two companions in the destruction of the Philadelphia.”
“Old Pepper,” leaning across the table, suddenly grasped a hand each of his two young captains.
“My boys,” he said with shining eyes, “the first day you sat with me at this table the sight of your youth, and the knowledge of the duties you had to perform, gave me one of the most terrible fits of depression I ever suffered. I deeply regretted that I had assumed charge of such an expedition with what I bitterly called then a parcel of schoolboy captains. Now I can only say that you have all turned out the best boys I ever saw—for I can not yet call you men.”
This outburst, so unlike Commodore Preble’s usual stern and somewhat morose manner, touched both Decatur and Somers; and Decatur said, laughing, but with moisture in his eyes:
“You see, commodore, it is because we have had such a good schoolmaster in the art of war.”
The conversation that followed was long and animated, and when Decatur and Somers left the ship and were rowed across the dark water the commodore’s permission had been given. On the Enterprise, the very next morning, the squadron being well out of sight of the town and at anchor, the preparation of the ketch began.
The day was a bright and beautiful one, although in September, which is a stormy month in the Mediterranean. The ketch was laid alongside of “Old Ironsides,” and the transfer of the powder and shells was begun at sunrise; for it was characteristic of Somers to do quickly whatever he had to do, and time was of great consequence to him then. The men worked with a will, knowing well enough that some daring expedition was on hand. Wadsworth, Somers’s first lieutenant, with the assistance of Decatur, directed the preparation of the fire-ship; while Somers, in the cabin of the Nautilus, arranged his private affairs and wrote his will, remembering well that he might never return from that night’s awful adventure. He wrote several letters and sealed them, and then the last one, inclosing his will, was to Decatur. The other letters were long, but that to Decatur was brief. It only said: