“If every plank in the Philadelphia is destroyed, you shall have my best efforts to make you a post-captain for it!”
“Every plank is destroyed, sir; every gun is burst and at the bottom of the harbor; and the ship, after burning to the water’s edge, exploded, and you could not have told the place where she lay,” answered Decatur, in a quiet voice.
At this a mighty hurrah went up from the officers and men on the Constitution.
“Not a man was lost——” continued Decatur, but at that another storm of cheering cut him short. Somers, the quietest and most self-contained man on the squadron, was cheering wildly, and literally dancing in his excitement. The commodore hurried Decatur into the cabin to get the particulars. Lawrence told the glorious story on the quarter-deck; while Danny Dixon, who was coxswain, got permission to leave the Intrepid’s boat, and to a listening crowd of blue-jackets on the fok’sl he narrated the noble adventures of the Intrepid.
When Decatur returned to the deck to get into his boat he found the rigging full of men, and as he left the ship, taking Somers with him, that they might have their usual long and intimate talk, the yards were manned, and three rousing American cheers shook the Constitution’s deck in honor of the Intrepid’s young commander.
Amid all the felicitations on the outcome of the expedition, the modesty and calmness of Decatur under his weight of splendid achievement were remarked upon—especially as he was so young and so impetuous. But when he and Somers were alone in the cabin of the Argus, they suddenly threw aside their dignity and acted like a couple of crazy schoolboys. They hugged and pounded each other, they laughed, they cried, they joked, they sang, and at last the only thing that quieted them was the usually grave Somers shoving Decatur into a chair and shouting:
“Now, you lucky rascal, don’t dare to move from that chair until you have told me all about the fight!”
On the morning of the 3d of August, 1804, began that immortal series of five assaults on the town, the fortresses, and the fleets of Tripoli that were destined to forever destroy this piratical and barbarous power. The force of the Americans was but little. With one heavy frigate—the glorious old Constitution—three brigs, three schooners, two bomb vessels, and three gunboats, manned by one thousand and sixty officers and men, Commodore Preble stood boldly in to attack the town defended by the Bashaw’s castle, not less than a dozen powerful forts, a fleet of three cruising vessels, two galleys, and nineteen gunboats, manned by twenty-five thousand Turks and Arabs. The harbor was, moreover, protected by a line of shoals and reefs perfectly well known to the Tripolitans, but very imperfectly known to the Americans, and which the Constitution could not approach very closely without incurring the fate of the unfortunate Philadelphia. But whatever “Old Pepper” lacked in ships and guns he made up in men; for every soul in the American fleet was worthy to serve under the flag that flew from the mastheads.