Decatur and Somers

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Decatur, too overcome to reply, bowed silently, and motioned to Somers. The two friends, without speaking a word, got into the barge together. Decatur unconsciously gripped Somers’s hand hard, as he had often done in the old days when they had been schoolmates together, and in this hour of grief Somers seemed closer to him than ever before.

They soon reached the gunboat, and found James Decatur lying on the deck, where he had gallantly fallen, still alive but unconscious. His handsome boyish head was supported by Midshipman Morris, of whom he had been very fond, and around him the sailors gathered in sympathetic silence, and showing in their humble way the grief they felt at the death of their brave young commander.

The sailors then, lifting James Decatur tenderly, placed him in the Constitution’s barge. Morris followed and still supported him, helped by Somers, while Decatur for the first time gave way to his grief, and, holding his brother’s fast-chilling hand, sobbed aloud. James Decatur did not seem to be in pain as his breath grew fainter and fainter. Somers looked apprehensively at Morris, who shook his head sadly in response to Somers’s glances of anxious inquiry. The men, although worn with the labors of that glorious day, pulled with a will. They were about fifty yards away from the frigate, when James Decatur opened his eyes, and they rested on his brother for a moment. A faint smile passed over his face, and he said in a pleasant voice, “Good-night,” and with one gasp all was over.

Decatur was the first to realize it. Neither Somers nor Morris could restrain his tears; but Decatur, regaining his composure, said, “I loved him so much that I would rather see him as he is than living with any cloud upon him.”

In a few moments James Decatur’s body was carried on board the frigate by the sailors, and followed by Decatur, Somers, and Morris. The bodies of thirteen other brave men who had died gloriously for their country that day, were also taken on board; and the Constitution, after having inflicted terrible damage on her enemies, hauled off, and in company with the rest of the squadron ran out of gun-shot.

The frigate was much cut up aloft, and had lost her main royal yard, but otherwise the tremendous onslaught of her guns upon the enemy had brought no corresponding injury to herself. The brigs, schooners, gun-vessels, and bombards had also escaped comparatively unharmed; while the Tripolitans had had three gunboats sunk, three captured, one of their strongest batteries destroyed, and all the defenses much battered.

At sunset the whole squadron came to anchor three leagues from the town. The bodies of the thirteen seamen, and James Decatur, the only officer, were decently dressed in uniform, covered with ensigns, and laid upon shot-boxes arranged on the quarter-deck. All during the short August night Decatur watched by the body of his brother, and Somers kept that solemn vigil with him. As the hours passed on, with the silence of the star-lit August night, broken only by the regular step of the deck officer and the occasional striking of the ship’s bells, Somers began to say some things that had long dwelt in his heart.

“Why should we pity him, Decatur?” he asked, pointing to the body of James Decatur, wrapped in the flag, “Can you imagine a better death than to die for one’s country and for the good of humanity?—for the conquest of these pirates will save many innocent lives, and release many thousands of prisoners who are suffering like our own countrymen. The feeling has been on me for a long time that there is but one thing worth living for or fighting for, and that is our duty. You love pleasure better than I; and, so many things that you value seem worthless to me. I acknowledge an ambition to leave an honorable name behind me, and to do something for my country that will be remembered; and if, in trying to do this, I should lose my life in this far-off land, recollect I lose it willingly.”

Somers spoke in a prophetic voice; and as Decatur, in the shadowy half-light, looked into his friend’s eyes, he saw an expression there as if Somers were already gazing into another world.

Just as the radiant sunrise turned the blue Mediterranean into a sea of gold, the solemn call resounded through the Constitution, “All hands to bury the dead!” The ensign flew at half-mast, the yards were set cock-a-bill, the sails half furled, the ropes hung in bights; everything was arranged to express mourning and distress. Commodore Preble himself read the service at the open gangway; and as the awful words were uttered, “We therefore commit their bodies to the deep, looking for their resurrection when the sea shall give up its dead,” the bodies of James Decatur and the thirteen gallant seamen who were his companions in death as in glory slid over the rail and sank swiftly into the sapphire sea. In another moment the drums beat a double roll, the bugler sounded a cheerful call; as if by magic the yards were squared, the sails were clewed up, the ropes hauled taut, the flag hoisted; for among men who put their lives daily and hourly in peril at the service of their country it is considered that those who die gloriously are not to be mourned, but envied. So felt Somers, as, taking Decatur’s arm, he said to him with strange prescience: