“Mister Anderson, be good enough to stream a tops’l yard, one those spares there on deck, if you please. We must slow her down even more.” Decatur shouted forward and watched as the bosun grabbed a few seamen who, after securing lines to the stout piece of timber, carried it aft and heaved it over the taffrail. The lines quickly took a strain and held the spar across our roiling wake, just before the small boat we towed astern. Intrepid slowed reluctantly, causing a smile to replace the frown on our captain’s face.
Inexorably, the harbor entrance and nightfall drew close. To Decatur’s and all of our joy, nightfall arrived well before the entrance. The wind began to drop causing, first, the drag to be retrieved and, ultimately, the reefs and handed sails to be shaken out.
“My God, Oliver! First we’re tearing along too fast to suit him, and now we’re barely rippling the surface. Perhaps he waited a trifle too long before he hauled in the spar. We may be sitting out here all night!” Thomas complained to me. He pointed ahead of us. “Look there, you can see the lights in the watch towers ashore. We should be in there, boarding that ship and firing her!”
“I suspect that Captain Decatur knows well what he is about, Thomas. And I’d wager we’ll be boarding sooner than either of us expect.” I left him and headed to the quarterdeck to take the watch with Mister Hobbs.
When I got there, Decatur and he were deep in conversation, so I moved to the leeward side and kept my own counsel. A smile from each to the other, and they separated, Decatur to the wind’ard side, his private domain, even on this little vessel, and Hobbs took a position near the helmsman. I joined him. He nodded at me but remained silent, as did I.
“Well, Mister Baldwin, are you ready for your first taste of real action? I expect this one will be a trifle warmer than when last we encountered the enemy!” Decatur spoke quietly to me, raising his voice only enough to be heard from the wind’ard rail where he stood, leaning his back against it.
Startled by his disembodied voice, I responded quickly, “Yes, sir. I certainly hope so, sir. I am somewhat nervous about it, though.” I tried to sound confident, more confident than I felt.
“I am, too, Mister Baldwin. I am, too. You may not know that my own father commanded that splendid vessel during the recent unpleasantness with France; that makes it, in a small way, a part of me, my history, as well as my father’s. And I am saddened to be putting our fine Philadelphia-built ship to the torch, but better to fire her than let that heathen pirate have the use of her.
“As you know, she was built and paid for by the upstanding and loyal citizens of our fair city, then given to the government. With your father a renowned cabinetmaker there, you likely feel as I do about burning such a fine piece of work as that vessel. Is his work in that ship, that you know of?” Without waiting for an answer, he assumed my agreement and went on. “Is it not a wonder, Mister Baldwin, that both our fathers had a hand in the history of that monument to our fair city? Perhaps you find that as unsettling as I do.” Decatur stepped near and smiled warmly at me, trying, I think, to ease my worries.
“Oh, sir. I don’t recall whether his was the shop commissioned to finish the Cabin and wardroom in Philadelphia; it surely could have been. I was only a boy of nine years when she was launched. I do recall seeing her before her masts went in, though. A splendid sight she made, especially in the company of so many other fine ships moored right close by.” The memory was dim as, at the time, it barely signified to me. Now the ship’s importance lay only in the fact that she had recently been the assigned station of my brother and was partly the reason that he languished in a prison. But I would most assuredly not offer that sentiment to Captain Decatur, especially as he waxed sentimental about his own father and the citizens of our hometown.
The wind grew even lighter, and it was nearly midway through the night watch when we carefully, now with Mister Catalano’s steady and knowledgeable hand on the tiller, made our way into the harbor.
“Captain, a signal from Syren, sir. Cap’n Stewart asks us to wait for the boat. They can not catch us up.” The quartermaster tucked his signal book under his arm, lowered his glass, and faced the captain, expecting as we all did that he would acknowledge the lights and heave to. Decatur shifted his own glass from the harbor fortification to the barely visible cutter well astern, which held the ten men from Syren who were to make up our full compliment. It was apparent that Captain Stewart had waited too long before sending them after us and, even with the failing air, they would, as the Syren’s signal had told, be unable to overtake us.
“If we wait, we will most surely lose mis dying breeze and never get in at all without using the sweeps. Signal the Syren to recall the boat; we will proceed without them.” He paused and, raising his voice a bit, faced forward. “The fewer the men, the greater the honor.” His voice, as he no doubt intended, carried to the men amidships and, I think, filled them and the officers with an even higher sense of duty and the glory to be won from our success.
Judd, Thomas, and I stood forward of the quarterdeck, there was little enough room for Mister Hobbs, the pilot, and the captain, and I had been excused with the arrival of Mister Catalano to the helm. At the captain’s words, we looked at one another and, in the pale light of the quarter moon, Judd and Thomas looked a bit wan; so, I suspect, did I.I hoped it was simply the moonlight. I seemed unable to stand still or find a comfortable position. Even though the night air held a delightful coolness, I became aware of moisture trickling down my collar and back, and my stomach seemed beset by a strange churning that threatened to move into my bowels.
“You men there. Only the watch on deck. The rest of you, below or lie down below the bulwarks. We need to look like a weather-beat trader, short-handed.” Lieutenant Hobbs spoke with a quiet gruffness to his voice that seemed to carry to the bow and inspired the men to move quickly. In only a few moments, barely ten souls were visible on deck, including the officers. When I looked at the quarterdeck, I was stunned to see Moors at the helm and standing nearby. Flowing robes and headcoths over swarthy faces glowed softly in the dim light, and I stared, elbowing Judd to look from our position behind the deckhouse.
“Oliver, you dolt! What did you think, for heaven’s sake? We’ve not been taken over. That is Hobbs, there on the larboard side, and the tall one, that’ll be Captain Decatur. The little fellow there at the tiller is Catalano. Those costumes, their darkened faces and hands, along with the few men on deck, are what we hope will act to get us close to the frigate. Now hush!” Judd’s whisper was harsh in my ear, and I was glad for the darkness, feeling as foolish as I did. I tried to remain still, but it was not to be. I fidgeted and fussed. The longer we hid there by the deckhouse, the worse I felt. The sweat ran down my face in spite of the continual efforts of my right sleeve. More traced a course down my back, and my wet shirt grew cold against my skin. There was no question in my mind that I would soon either throw up or foul my britches, or both. I wanted to shout, make noise, something to break the tension, but with considerable effort, held my peace.
My personal problems were forgotten as soon as I peeked around the forward end of the deckhouse. We were coming, ghosting in the failing air, right up to the frigate! I felt a chill run through me, and, without warning, my stomach heaved, and my mouth grew unspeakably dry, then wet, as if I had just taken a drink but neglected to swallow. I knew I would be ill and hoped the darkness would hide the effects of it. I swallowed hard several times as I pulled my head quickly back into the cover afforded by the house. I knew I had begun to tremble.
Judd sensed my fear; it wouldn’t have taken a great amount of perception. “Oliver, just concentrate on what Decatur and Lawrence told us before we came in; no shooting, just cutlasses, half-pikes, and tomahawks. You will be with Captain Decatur and you with your fifteen men will take and hold the spar deck. I am going with Lawrence below to the berthing deck, and Hobbs will take Wheatley down to the cockpit and storerooms. Once we’ve got her, we set the combustibles and powder aboard, set the
fuses, and get out. No prisoners. And for God’s sake, remember the watchword, Philadelphia. It will be dark, and you don’t want to be mistook for one of them! It’ll be over and done before you know it.” Judd’s whisper gave me only slight comfort, but it did seem to take my mind off the way I felt. I thought I could manage another peek and carefully eased my eyes around the corner of the cabin. I would rather that I had not!
“Judd! Her guns are run out! That means they must be loaded. And there must be men aboard to fire them. We’ve only got four little cannon. That castle, or fort, looks close . . . real close, Judd, and I’d warrant there’s guns up mere too. How’re we . . . how can Decatur . . . oh, God! What’s going to happen to us!” I whispered back to him after I saw what lay ahead of us. Concern—no, fear it was—colored even my hushed tones. I wanted to run to the leeward rail and unburden my poor belly. But I remained in place, and Judd put a hand on my arm to silence me as the pilot began shouting to someone in a strange language.
A voice from the frigate answered in the same tongue, and a short conversation ensued. The voice from the frigate did not seem angry, and Catalano’s voice sounded more weary than anything else. I noticed that Decatur was close to the pilot’s side. While I was unable to make out any words, I knew he was speaking to the Sicilian, likely telling him what to say. I risked another peek from behind the deckhouse. We were stopped scarcely fifty yards from the frigate and directly under her guns! A look aloft showed the sails limp, hanging from the spars like clothes on a wash line; not a breath of air stirred. We looked directly into the gaping muzzles of those huge cannons. One, should it be fired, would be sufficient to blow us to matchwood; the half dozen trained on us would leave nary a trace.
With an air of indifference, some men wearing the same Moorish costume as Decatur, Hobbs, and Catalano appeared from the deck and climbed over the taffrail, hauled in the boat we had towed for the past ten days, and disappeared into it. Convincingly sloppy in their rowing, they carried a line from the ketch toward the looming side of Philadelphia. The pirates sent out a boat, also with a line, which met our boat, joined the two lines and returned, as did ours.
The line was passed up to the deck and our men, the American sailors laying along the side under the bulwark, began to haul us in toward our target without being seen. Quickly Intrepid was just below their deck.
“AMERICANOS! AMERICANOS!” The cry went through the frigate like windblown fire. Turbaned heads peered over the bulwark, looking down at us.
“BOARD, BOYS! BOARD ‘em!” Decatur’s shout galvanized us all into action. Suddenly sixty whooping American cutthroats, brandishing cutlasses, halfpikes, and tomahawks were swarming over our rail and then the enemy’s. The flowing robes and billowing pantaloons I had seen on our men had been hastily cast aside. I have no recollection of leaving my position aside the ketch’s deckhouse nor of climbing aboard the frigate; suddenly, I was there, on the enemy’s deck right astern of Captain Decatur, brandishing a cutlass aloft in a death grip, screaming words, unintelligible even to me, at the white robed, black-bearded sailors before me.
More men followed us, and I was aware of Judd and Lawrence with a cadre of sailors flowing by me as they drove a large group of robed Arabs before them. Hobbs, his sword shining dully in the dim light, appeared, pushed me unceremoniously to one side, and neatly skewered a huge pirate through the chest. I had not even seen the man, so intent was I on watching our own men on the frigate’s deck, and was quite nonplussed by the suddenness of it all. I did not realize until later that he had most likely saved my life. Hobbs put his foot on the man’s chest to hold him as he withdrew his sword and, without a look back, rushed forward toward a hatch where some more of the pirates had disappeared. It occurred to me that he was still wearing his small glasses pushed down on the end of his nose.
The confusion and noise was overpowering: the clanging of cutlasses; the shouts, both in English and Arabic; the running, pounding feet; and the pushing and shoving as some tried to get away from us, while others pursued them. Some of the Arabs fought, swinging short curved swords and pikes at our men. I stood transfixed, trying to get my bearings and find Captain Decatur in the melee.
Out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a figure, dark skinned and cloaked in white, rushing in my direction. He held one of the vicious-looking curved swords before him and swung it side to side as if cutting a swath through imaginary jungle growth. Scimitar! The word flashed unbidden into my brain, and it occurred to me incongruously as I turned to face my attacker that Edward had mentioned in his letter that the curved swords these rascals carried were called scimitars.
Clutching my own blade in both hands, I swung the cutlass with nothing more than instinct and luckily managed to knock his thrust aside. His blade hit mine so sharply that my hands and one arm vibrated in time to the ringing of my own steel. So startled was I by my success that I stopped, pleased with my performance. Prematurely, it turns out, as the man recovered instantly and came at me with renewed vigor, aiming a cut at my head. I ducked the blow and, with a still tingling arm, brought my cutlass up in a swinging, one-handed arc in the general direction of his chest, but with no target in mind. The man turned just as the edge of my weapon struck and, for his trouble, received a gash in his upper arm that immediately issued forth a stream of gore, black in the moonlight.
I had no opportunity this time to revel in this new display of my prowess; with a guttural utterance in his own language, my enemy acknowledged my success and hesitated, though for only a moment, his evil curved blade poised aloft for a death blow. But his hesitation gave me opportunity. I brought my cutlass, still in the air, back, rolling my hand over, and with it, the blade, just as Bosun Anderson had taught us, and, with all my strength, drew it down and across the point where his shoulder and neck joined. I was rewarded with a crimson fountain and felt the warmth of the unlucky wretch’s blood splashing onto my arm and chest; some of it splattered into my mouth and the metallic taste of it made me spit, a gesture that, should the Arab have noticed, would have made me out stronger than I certainly felt. A surprised look crossed the man’s face; his weapon dropped to the deck as his knees buckled, and he seemed to wilt before my eyes. He dropped first to his knees, then fell forward onto his face as his life’s blood pooled at my feet, glistening and black.
Breathless, charged with the fire of combat and my own brush with death, I started aft in pursuit of Decatur and more opponents for my invincible blade! I realized that much of the din of shouting and clanging steel had subsided; indeed, there suddenly seemed only a few white-robed sailors on the deck, and they were rushing headlong for the far bulwark.
“Hold, men. They’re done!” Decatur’s voice rang out from the frigate’s quarterdeck as the remaining Arabs leaped over the rail into the dark waters of the harbor, joining their mates, both dead and alive, who had preceded them. In the silence that now filled the night air, we could hear further sounds of a struggle drifting up from below, and I remembered that Judd and Thomas were down there, likely meeting the same early resistance we had met topside. Would that they might overcome it as quickly as we had!
As I reached the bulwark at the break of the poop, the silence became complete, signaling the end to the combat, and I sagged, suddenly quite exhausted and faint, against the waist-high wall. The sounds of men splashing in the water below me filtered into my brain, but did not signify; I could scarcely move my arms. They hung at my sides, the cutlass barely grasped in my limp hand. Without warning, a Saint Vitus’ dance of trembling took over my whole being, and I felt hot tears coursing down my cheeks.
“Sir! Are you hurt, sir? You’re covered in blood! Where is your wound? Doctor! Mister Wakefield, here, sir!” A sailor—I could not call to mind his name, though he was one of our Enterprises—faced me, wearing a most concerned expression.
“What? Huh? Blood?” I stammered, unable to focus my thoughts and join them to words. I stared at the man, uncomprehendingly, blankly. “No, I think I am quite all r
ight.” But his question caused me to look down at my own self to discover, shockingly, that I was indeed covered in blood; in fact, the front of my shirt, my arms, and my hands were black in the starlight. But nothing hurt; my shoulder ached as did my sword-arm. I noticed, without any emotion, that the skin on my hands and my neck was sticky. While I had never experienced the hurt of a sword cut, I assumed I would at least recognize pain in some part of me, even in my befuddled state. I repeated, “No. I think I am unharmed.” I saw Reliance Wakefield, his white surgical apron showing dark blotches, hurrying toward us.
“Aye, sir. Glad of it. Must be someone else’s gore all over you then. Quite a scrap, it were, eh, sir? 1 reckon we give ‘em what-fer!” The sailor grinned at me and left. He exchanged a brief word with the medico, who changed course and headed forward where, presumably, somebody needed his services more than I.
“Get the combustibles and explosives up, lively there.” Decatur’s voice again cut through my fog and fuddle. Only slightly more aware of my own actions, I moved across the deck toward to where Intrepid was tied alongside. Already men were passing up casks and barrels, rope and slow match to willing hands in the frigate. I saw Lieutenant Hobbs and Thomas Wheatley directing the men who staggered under the casks and crates as they headed for the hatch. I wanted to catch up with Thomas, to see how he had fared below, but he was already heading back down to the hold carrying a coil of slow match.
The Greater the Honor Page 25
