Lieutenant Stewart's prediction came true. The crews of the squadron actually fought with each other for a chance to go. Decatur's name to them spelt romance. His exploits had been on every man's lips.
The crew of the ketch Intrepid having been chosen, off we started. It was sundown when we drifted into the harbor of Tripoli. We approached the city knowing that a sudden fear of attack had swept over Tripoli; that the forts were manned; the guns loaded, and a sharp watch kept.
We learned later that the Moslem guards congratulated themselves when they saw the ketch entering the harbor, thinking that it was manned by good Mohammedans who had had the shrewdness to escape blockading ships.
The gates of the city were shut. The Captain of the Port would not inspect the ship until morning. The call of the muezzin sounded over the still waters of the bay. Night fell on the city.
On board the Intrepid all of the crew, except six men disguised as Moors, were concealed below deck or behind bulwarks. Our ketch drifted towards the Philadelphia. A sentinel on the frigate hailed us, but the answer came back from our Maltese pilot in the sentry's own language to the effect that the ketch had lost her anchors during a recent gale and wished to make fast to the anchors of the Philadelphia until new ones could be purchased the next morning. As if taking permission for granted, Lieutenant Decatur directed Blake, a sailor who spoke Maltese, and Reuben and myself to set out from the ketch in a small boat for the purpose of fastening a line to a ring-bolt on the frigate's bow. When this was done, the sailors on the ketch were to haul on the line, to bring our boat nearer to the frigate. The men hidden behind the bulwarks caught the rope as it came through the hands of their disguised comrades, and helped in the hauling.
Suspecting nothing, the Moslems on the Philadelphia sent in turn a small boat with a line to aid in mooring the Intrepid, but Blake met them and took the line from their hands, saying, in broken Maltese:
"We will save the gentlemen the trouble."
So far so good. But now, as the ketch was being hauled in by the bow line, the pull of the stern line swung her broadside towards the Tripolitans, and the guards on the Philadelphia saw the men who, under the screen of the bulwarks, were hauling in the line.
"Americanos! Americanos!" we heard them shriek.
Swift action followed on the part of Decatur. The hidden sailors sprang into the open and gave the line a pull that sent the ketch close to the Philadelphia. An Arab cut the rope, but the Americans were now near enough to throw grapnels.