The lieutenant replied: "No sir, this looks like death; your friend is a professed duellist; mine is inexperienced."
Decatur gave the warning: "Take aim!" and then "Fire!" Both, through agitation, missed. Again they faced each other. The pistols were discharged simultaneously. Tyler fell. A surgeon hurried towards him, while Bainbridge turned to Decatur. "I don't think his bullet touched me!" he said.
"I thank God for that!" said the lieutenant. "I fear it is not so well with your adversary, but he invited it. Let's be off!" They passed poor Tyler, lying mortally wounded, and lifted their hats as they went.
Reuben James, ever since I met him, had talked Decatur, Decatur, Decatur. He idolized him. During our country's affair with France he had served on a frigate on which Decatur was a midshipman, and the exploits of the young officer had so appealed to Reuben that he would have followed the youth into the mouth of death.
And indeed, what Reuben told me about Decatur made me also a fervent worshipper.
My own state was proud to claim Decatur as a son, for he was born in Sinnepuxent, Maryland. He was of the blood of Lafayette. His father and grandfather had been naval officers before him; and the former had served with honor on our side in the war of the Revolution.
This, however, was not his first experience in these waters. He had been an officer in Captain Dale's squadron, serving on the Essex under Captain Bainbridge. Bainbridge and he had been linked in an affair that made him eager now to help his imprisoned friend. The commander of a Spanish gunboat insulted Captain Bainbridge at long distance while the Essex lay in the harbor of Barcelona. Later Decatur was also insulted. Decatur visited the gunboat.
"Where is your captain?" he demanded of the officer on duty.
"He has gone ashore," was the reply.
"Tell him that Lieutenant Decatur, of the frigate Essex, pronounces him a cowardly scoundrel, and that when they meet on shore he will cut his ears off!"