Decatur and Somers

by Molly Elliot Seawell

To this succeeded an appalling blackness and stillness. Every light on the shipping and in the castle and the town had been extinguished by the force of the explosion. Not a cry, not a groan was heard from the harbor, upon which the dense mist of the fog had again settled; but floating on the dark bosom of the water were thirteen blackened and lifeless bodies—the thirteen brave men who had cheerfully rendered up their lives, when it was all they could do for their country.

All night, at intervals, a moaning gun was heard from the frigate, in the vain hope that some of those heroic men might yet be living. All night Decatur swung on the forechains of his ship, flashing a lantern across the water, and listening vainly and in agony for some sound, some token, from the friend he was never again to see. But the gray dawn brought with it despair to him. For Somers and his brave companions had another morning, and another and more glorious sunrise.

* * * * * * * *

Six years after this, one evening in September, 1810, the Constitution, which had been standing off and on Tripoli for several days, approached the town. Since her last visit the Tripolitans had been effectually conquered, and peace had long prevailed; and so highly was the American name respected, that an American officer could go safely and alone all about the town and its suburbs.

The captain’s gig was lowered and manned, and Danny Dixon was its coxswain. Presently Decatur, in the uniform of a post captain, came down the ladder and seated himself in the stern sheets. The gig was then rapidly pulled toward the beach at the end of the town. Here Decatur left the boat, and, telling Danny that he would be back within an hour, walked quickly along to a little clump of trees outside the wall.

It was just such an evening as that six years before. The sun had gone down, and there was no moon, but, as if led by some invisible power, Decatur walked straight along the path to where the few straggling and stunted trees made a shadow against the white walls of the town and the white sand of the beach.

When he reached the spot, he saw, by the light of the stars that glinted faintly through the leaves, a little group of three graves, and farther off a larger group. These were the resting places of Somers and his men. At the first of the three graves together, there were four stones laid; at the second, two stones; while at the third and smallest, in which Israel, the little midshipman, slept, was only one stone.

Decatur stood with folded arms at the head of Somers’s grave. As in a dream the whole of his early life with his friend rose and passed before him. He remembered their boyhood together; then their happy days as careless and unthinking midshipmen, and the great scenes and adventures through which they had passed before Tripoli. That night, six years before, they had parted to meet no more in this world. Every incident of the night returned to him—the horror of the explosion, the long hours he spent hanging in the brig’s forechains, the agony of daybreak, when not a man or a boat or even a spar could be seen.

As Decatur stood by this lonely grave, he felt as if he were still conversing with his friend.

“No one has ever been, no one could ever be to me what you were, Somers,” he almost said aloud—“the bravest, the most resolute, and the gentlest of men.”