And first we cleaned the quarter-deck,
And then from stern to stem
We charged into our enemies
And quickly slaughtered them.
All around was the dreadful sound
Of corpses striking the sea,
And the awful shrieks of dying men
In their last agony.
The heathen fought like devils all,
But one by one they fell,
Swept from the deck by our cutlasses
To the water, and so to hell.
Some we found in the black of the hold,
Some to the fo'c's'le fled,
But all in vain; we sought them out
And left them lying dead;
Till at last no soul but Christian souls
Upon that ship was found;
The twenty score were dead, and we,
The hundred, safe and sound.
And, stumbling over the tangled dead,
The deck a crimson tide,
We fired the ship from keel to shrouds
And tumbled over the side.
Then out to sea we sailed once more
With the world as light as day,
And the flames revealed a hundred sail
Of the heathen there in the bay.
All suddenly the red light paled,
And the rain rang out on the sea;
Then—a dazzling flash, a deafening roar,
Between us and Tripoli!
Then, nothing behind us, and nothing before,
Only the silence and rain;
And the jaws of the sea took hold of our bows
And cast us up again.
By the beard of the Prophet the Bashaw swore
He would scourge us from the seas;
Yankees should trouble his soul no more—
By the Prophet's beard the Bashaw swore,
Then lighted his hookah and took his ease,
And troubled his soul no more.