“Your request is rather unusual,” replied the officer.
“Bananas and oranges, with a few bales of raw silk,” answered Catalano, pretending that he had understood the Tripolitan to ask what the Stella’s cargo was. The ketch continued to draw rapidly near, and from the Philadelphia could be seen the supposed Italian mariners moving lazily about and gesticulating to one another.
“Mule-head and son of a jackass,” cried the Tripolitan, “it is nothing to me what you are laden with! I say it is dangerous to have you dogs of Christians made fast to us. If you get on board, you will steal anything you lay your hands on.”
“That’s not a very pleasant way to meet men who have been in a whole gale for six days, with all our provisions spoiled, and on short allowance of water, and expecting every moment to go to the bottom. On the voyage we met with a xebec of your country with her captain ill and half the crew down with scurvy. We broke our cargo to give them fresh fruit, and took the captain on board and landed him at Tunis.” So answered Catalano, in an injured voice, the ketch still advancing steadily.
“Then you may lie by us until daylight,” answered the officer. At the same time he ordered a boat with a fast to be lowered. Then he called out again, his voice resounding over the smooth water, now lighted by the moon, that had climbed high in the deep blue of the night sky:
“The Transfer,” answered Catalano, prompted by Decatur.
This was a small frigate lately purchased of the British at Malta, and which the Tripolitans were anxiously looking for.
“The wind died out before she could get in,” continued Catalano, “and she asked us to report her.”
Not the slightest suspicion had yet entered the minds of the Tripolitans that the Intrepid was anything but a trading vessel, and luckily enough for Decatur and his dauntless company; for at that moment a puff of wind came, the Intrepid’s head fell off, and she drifted directly under the Philadelphia’s broadside.
At this appalling moment the least hint of the Intrepid’s real character would have meant death to every man on board. Decatur, with his unshakable coolness, ordered a boat out, with Lawrence and three seamen, carrying a hawser, which they quietly fastened to the forechains of the Philadelphia. The ketch meanwhile was drifting under the port batteries of the frigate, toward the stern, where, if she had escaped the guns on broadside, the stern chasers could have annihilated her. But every man on board shared Decatur’s calm self-possession at this critical moment.