“The British ship ‘Transfer,’” said Catalano, promptly.
The ketch was slowly drifting down until a grappling-iron could almost be thrown aboard. Right under the broadside she went, and a line of dark heads peered over the rail at her as she gradually approached the bow.
The chains of the frigate were now almost in the grasp of Reuben James, on the forecastle, when the wind failed and a cat’s-paw caught the ketch aback. Down she drifted towards the terrible broadside. But at a sign from Decatur the eager Lawrence and James got into a small boat and carried a line to a ring-bolt at the frigate’s bow. A boat put out from the “Philadelphia” at the same time. But Lawrence coolly took the hawser from the Tripolitan—“to save the gentleman trouble,” he explained—and brought it aboard the “Intrepid.” A moment more, and the ketch was warping down under the “Philadelphia’s” quarter. It was a moment of dire peril. The slightest suspicion, and they would be blown to pieces.
Decatur leaned lightly against the rail, but his hand grasped his cutlass under his robe so that the blood tingled in his nails and his muscles were drawn and tense. Morris and Joseph Bainbridge stood at the rigging beside him, trembling like greyhounds in leash.
Suddenly they swung around and shot out from under the shadow into a yellow patch of moonlight. The watchful eyes above the rail saw the anchor and cables and the white jackets of the sailors below decks as they strove to hide themselves in the shadows. One glance was enough. In an instant the ship resounded with the thrilling cry, “Americano! Americano!”
At the same moment the “Intrepid” ground up against the side of the frigate. In an instant, as if by magic, she was alive with men. Throwing off his disguise, and with a loud cry of “Boarders, away!” Decatur sprang for the mizzen-chains. And now the hot blood of fighting leaped to their brains. The long agony of suspense was over. Lawrence and Laws sprang for the chain-plates and hauled themselves up. Decatur’s foot slipped, and Morris was the first on deck. Laws dashed at a port, pistols in hand. Nothing could withstand the fury of the charge, and over the rail they swarmed, cutlasses in teeth, jumping over the nettings, and down on the heads of the Tripolitans below. Though Morris was first on deck, Decatur lunged in ahead of him, bringing down the Tripolitan officer before he could draw his sword. One of them aimed a pike at him, but he parried it deftly, and Morris cut the fellow down with a blow that laid his shoulder open from collar to elbow.
Though surprised, the Tripolitans fought fiercely. They had won their title of “the best hand-to-hand fighters in the world” in many a hard pirate battle in the Mediterranean. Around the masts they rallied, scimetars in hand, until they were cut or borne down by the fury of their opponents.
DECATUR BOARDS THE “PHILADELPHIA”
After the first order, not a word was spoken and not a shot was fired. The Americans needed no orders. Over the quarter-deck they swept—irresistible, clearing it in a trice. Overwhelmed by the fierce onslaught, the Tripolitans fled for life, the sailors driving them up on the forecastle and overboard in a mass, where their falling bodies sounded like the splash of a ricochet.