A Call to Arms (23 page)

Gradually, blessedly, the fierce winds moderated. The high seas subsided to great rolling swells. The water streaming down from the weather deck shriveled to rivulets, then to occasional drips, then to nothing at all. When at last the two hatchways above were thrown open, clean, warm, delicious air washed down into the hold in company with tentative strands of sunlight piercing through gray clouds that were breaking apart to reveal blue sky. First to clamber down the main hatchway ladder, to no one's surprise, was Stephen Decatur.

He stood amidships between two rows of men struggling to get to their feet. Except for the two midshipmen, a handful of sailors from
Constitution,
and the Sicilian, these sailors and Marines were attached to USS
Enterprise,
Decatur's command. And to a man they respected him for his fair-mindedness, derring-do, and calm under fire—the latter best exemplified, perhaps, by the two duels, neither instigated by him, from which he had emerged the victor.

“As you were, lads,” Decatur said. “As you were.” He placed his hands on his hips as he surveyed the scene, his dark eyes taking in the blank stares fixed upon him. Until this cruise Jamie Cutler had not had occasion to interact with the young lieutenant, although he had learned much about him from his shipmates. Decatur was Philadelphia born and bred, and he had attended the University of Pennsylvania after graduating from the Episcopal Academy. His father, Stephen Decatur Sr., had served with
distinction as a naval captain during the war with England and, later, during the war with France, in
Philadelphia.
Stephen Jr. had served in the Mediterranean since the start of the war, as a lieutenant aboard Commodore Dale's
Essex
in the first squadron, and as a flag lieutenant aboard
New York
in the second squadron under Commo. Richard V. Morris. His exemplary actions and accomplishments on those vessels had gained him, at the youthful age of twenty-five, his first command,
Intrepid.

“Good Lord,” he observed in a loud voice with a slice of humor in it, “are you men ever a sight for sore eyes!” Despite their misery and anxiety the volunteers responded with a low rumble of laughter, in part because Decatur himself posed such a sight. His curly black hair was matted down in clumps, and his long sideburns had dovetailed with an unshaven jawbone. The baggy pants, brightly colored vest, and turban-like hat he was wearing reinforced the impression of an Old Testament prophet.

“Right, lads,” he went on more seriously when the rumbling had run its course, “here's where we are. We're going to man the pumps and clean up this stinking mess. And I want you all to eat and drink what you can. If we exhaust our provisions, we'll resupply from
Syren,
who, praise God, lies within sight. You may go topside to take the air and to wash and dry your clothes, but only in groups of five. By my reckoning, the storm drove us about two hundred miles from Tripoli. I'll know for certain after the noon sighting. It will take us a while to get back there even if these quartering winds remain fair. But until our hull touches
Philadelphia's,
it's imperative that we maintain the appearance of a local Maltese tradesman manned by a small crew. The success of our mission depends on our pulling off this ruse. You understand? The storm hasn't fogged your memory?”

Men chuckled, shook their heads. Decatur went on: “I leave it to you midshipmen to determine who mans the pumps, who goes topside and when, and who has deck-cleaning duty. I have ordered the galley fire lit, so you should have warm food in your bellies before too long. Whatever is served, I want you to eat it. I
order
you to eat it. We must get back our strength, lads. Hot work lies ahead for us.”

D
URING THE EARLY AFTERNOON
of February 16, according to plan,
Syren
dropped out of sight astern of
Intrepid.
Although
Syren
had never sailed along the coast of Tripoli—and therefore was not likely to be recognized—she too had been disguised to look like a local trading vessel. Her topgallant mast had been sent down, her gun ports closed
and painted over, and quarter-cloths had been raised to conceal the nettings on the bulwarks and barricade of her quarterdeck. Nevertheless, the arrival of two unidentified vessels approaching Tripoli Harbor together might arouse suspicion. So Decatur had ordered Lieutenant Stewart to keep his distance until nightfall, when he would approach
Intrepid,
lie to, and send over boats with additional volunteers.

Ahead, in the far distance, Decatur could see Point Tagiura jutting out to the east of the city. In the farther distance he could barely make out, through a spyglass, the crests of white water breaking against the seaward edges of Kaliuscia and Ra's az Zur reefs—the long chains of partially submerged rocks that protected the harbor both from fierce winter gales and from unwary intruders. Salvador Catalano, a native of Palmero who had navigated these waters dozens of times in the employ of Richard Farquhar—and who, coincidentally, had been in Tripoli the day
Philadelphia
was captured—stood beside Stephen Decatur on
Intrepid
's foredeck. With the Sicilian acting as pilot, Decatur hugged the coast south of the two chains of rocks that lay close under the guns of English Fort, a freestanding bastion located a mile to the east of the city walls. An alternative harbor entry, Catalano had explained, was through the oft-used Western Passage, a narrow but deep waterway snaking through the rocks and shoals near the opposite end of the harbor up by the Molehead Battery. But Decatur deemed this and other possible entryways too dangerous to attempt at night even if the moon were full, which tonight it was not.

Decatur checked his watch: 5:15. He looked astern and searched for
Syren.
No sign of her yet. He glanced aloft at a strip of cloth attached to the signal halyard and chewed his lower lip. The telltale indicated that the wind held fast and steady from the east, too strong by half for his liking. He passed word for James Lawrence, his first lieutenant in
Enterprise
and his first officer in
Intrepid.

“We need some sort of drogue, Jim,” he said, forgoing naval discipline in using a first-name address, “anything that will slow her down. We can't stand off and on. That would be too obvious. Toss out a line and tie on ladders, extra spars, timbers, whatever you can find.”

“Aye, Captain,” Lawrence said, adding with a grin, “Might I suggest some lubberly attention to the sails?”

Decatur nodded. “A capital notion.”

With what amounted to a sea anchor checking her speed and her sails luffing at their leeches,
Intrepid
appeared just as Decatur wanted her to appear to anyone observing her from shore: a Maltese merchant vessel
struggling to make harbor before nightfall. High on the signal halyard, at its apex, fluttered the British ensign.

Dusk was settling over the Barbary Coast as
Intrepid
sailed within a mile of the eastern end of the chain of rocks. Ahead, to larboard, loomed English Fort, its menacing black cannon protruding through embrasures. It was yet too early to attempt entry; the plan was to wait for dark and for
Syren.
Again Decatur scoured the waters astern. Again he saw empty water. Where was she? Yet another glance aloft at the telltale confirmed that the wind was moderating, as it often did this time of day, and was now blowing in increasingly sporadic directions, as if trying to find its proper direction. Soon they would face the opposite of the problem they had encountered several hours earlier.

“Mr. Cutler?” he said to the young midshipman stationed nearby, one of six crewmembers on deck. Like everyone else, he was dressed in the garb of a local sailor.

“Captain?”

“Mr. Cutler, we shall anchor here temporarily. Keep the anchor rode short, just enough to hold her. Cut loose the drogue and have the sweeps brought up. And I'll have our cutter called out and towed astern. We'll have need of it should we lose this wind altogether.”

“Yes, sir,” Jamie said. He did not salute. Captain Decatur had long since extinguished all visible signs of naval discipline aboard the ship.

Minutes ticked by into a quarter-hour, then a half-hour, then an hour. Decatur repeatedly checked his watch and peered eastward, the growing darkness gradually obscuring his vision. Time had run out. Decatur had to make a decision. He could no longer remain where he was. Abort or continue the mission? He sensed the tension sprouting along the weather deck, and it took all his discipline as a naval commander to keep his own anxiety in check.

“Mr. Morris,” he said to the midshipman from
Enterprise,
“we can delay no further. We shall weigh anchor and proceed on our own.”

Charles Morris, acting as boatswain, issued the orders necessary to raise the anchor and set the sails.

Decatur took command of the tiller and summoned Salvatore Catalano to his side. Together they set
Intrepid
on a course south by west, their landmark the lights flickering within English Fort. It took thirty minutes in an increasingly fickle wind to sail within two cable lengths of the fort; from there
Intrepid
assumed a more westerly course, shadowing the low, sandy coastline of Tripoli, careful to keep the dangerous rocks and shoals
well off to starboard. Ahead, to larboard, loomed the bashaw's castle, a massive stone edifice that anchored the northeastern corner of the fortress' seaward wall. Following Catalano's counsel, Decatur kept the castle between two and three points to larboard, following a course that would bring them on a direct line to
Philadelphia.
They could not yet see the frigate. She lay a mile or so ahead. So they relied on dead reckoning, their new beacons the lights flickering within the bashaw's castle, which they approached in the eerie glow of a crescent moon.

Slowly, ever so slowly,
Intrepid
ghosted along with a dying wind at her back. It was approaching 11:00 when
Philadelphia's
profile began to take shape. Four lanterns burned aboard her: one forward near the bow, one at the stern, and one on each side amidships. Decatur scanned the shoreline, settling his gaze on the city wall not six hundred feet away at the water's edge. He saw nothing to arouse concern. He saw no one at all, in fact, either on the walls or aboard the vessels of the Tripolitan Navy clustered together at anchor just east of French Fort, a structure similar to English Fort located at the western perimeter of the city's defenses.
Philadelphia
stood alone, closer to the rocks and shoals than to the city, a deformed and ignored belle of the ball.

Decatur signaled to James Cutler and Charles Morris to start bringing the volunteers from the hold onto the weather deck. Sailors and Marines crept up through the hatchways and lay prone, wriggling and snaking to make room for others, their presence hidden by the sharply rising bulwarks, against which lay eight long wooden sweeps on each side of the deck. Each man carried with him a three-inch piece of sperm candle, its wick soaked in turpentine, along with a tomahawk, dagger, or cutlass. Each of the squad leaders brandished a sword and had a brace of pistols tucked out of sight. Decatur had insisted that pistols be used only as a last resort. The weapon of choice this night was the silent double-edged blade.

As
Intrepid
approached
Philadelphia,
she was hailed from the frigate. “Take the tiller, Mr. Izard,” Decatur said to the midshipman, “and keep her off as best you can.” He walked forward to join Catalano at the bow. Decatur nodded at him. The Sicilian cupped his hands at his mouth.

“Ahoy,” he called out in Arabic. “We have come from Malta to load cattle for the British garrison there. We lost our anchor in the storm. We request permission to make fast to your vessel until morning.”

Intrepid
's crew, both those visible and those hidden from view, tensed while they waited for a reply.
Intrepid
lay all but adrift twenty yards astern of the frigate on her lee side. The wind had nearly vanished. Her sheets
were hauled in tight, their sails useless. Then, a cry from the frigate: “Who is your crew?”

“Three English, four Italians. I am Sicilian. My name is Salvatore Catalano. You may know of me. I have been trading in Tripoli for years.”

A second pause, then: “Permission granted. We will send over a boat with a line.”

“Thank you. We will also send our boat with a line.”

Decatur held his breath for two, six, ten seconds. When the Arabs neither questioned nor challenged that last statement, he exhaled slowly, turned around, and walked aft. The cutter was drawn up amidships, and four oarsmen and a coxswain dropped down onto the thwarts.

As the two ship's boats—the launch from
Philadelphia
and the cutter from
Intrepid
—approached each other, Catalano, standing arms akimbo at the bow of the ketch, continued to complain loudly about the storm, how they were blown off course, the nuisance of losing their anchor, anything that might distract those aboard
Philadelphia
and the approaching launch. No one in the frigate offered a reply. Decatur prayed that Catalano's monotonous chatter was lulling the enemy into apathy. It might just buy them a precious minute or two.

The two ship's boats met halfway across, each dragging a line secured to its mother ship. The coxswain in the cutter motioned to those in the launch to toss over a heaving line. When someone complied, an American sailor in the cutter grabbed the heavy knot at the bitter end and tied the two lines together in a sheet bend. The boats signaled the mother ships that all was ready. Sailors in both ships heaved on the line, which popped out of the water and grew taut. Slowly, hand over hand, they shortened the distance between
Philadelphia
and
Intrepid.
The sailors and Marines lying facedown aboard the ketch gripped their weapons.