CHAPTER XI
THE YOUNG DECATUR AND HIS BRILLIANT DEEDS AT TRIPOLI
How Our Navy Began and Ended a Foreign War
IN the ship Essex, one of the fleet that was sent to the Mediterranean to deal with the Moorish pirates, there was a brave young officer named Stephen Decatur. He was little more than a boy, for he was just past twenty-one years of age; but he had been in the fight between the Enterprise and the Tripoli, and was so bold and daring that he was sure to make his mark.
I must tell you how he first showed himself a true American. It was when the Essex was lying in the harbor at Barcelona, a seaport of Spain. The Essex was a handsome little vessel, and there was much praise of her in the town, people of fashion came to see her and invited her officers to their houses and treated them with great respect.
Now there was a Spanish warship lying in the port, of the kind called a xebec, a sort of three-masted vessel common in the Mediterranean Sea.
The officers of this ship did not like to see so much respect given to the Americans and so little to themselves. They grew jealous and angry, and did all they could to annoy and insult the officers of the Essex. Every time one of her boats rowed past the xebec it would be challenged and ugly things said.
The Americans bore all this quietly for a while. One day Captain Bainbridge, of the Essex, was talked to in an abusive way, and said little back. Another time a boat, under command of Lieutenant Decatur, came under the guns of the xebec, and the Spaniards on the deck hailed him with insulting words. This was more than young blood could stand, and he called to the officer of the deck and asked him what that meant, but the haughty Spaniard would give him no satisfaction.
"Very well," said Decatur. "I will call to see you in the morning. Pull off, lads."
The next morning Decatur had himself rowed over to the xebec, and went on board. He asked for the officer who was in charge the night before.