Corsair

The storm finally abated on February twelfth, but it wasn’t until the fifteenth that the two ships rendezvoused at sea and made their way back to Tripoli. That night, Captain Stephen Decatur, the squadron commander, convened a war council aboard the plucky little Intrepid. Henry Lafayette, along with eight heavily armed seamen, rowed over to join him.

“So you get to wait out the storm in comfort and now come aboard looking for glory, eh?” Decatur teased, reaching out to give Lafayette a hand over the low gunwale. He was a handsome, broad-shouldered man, with thick dark hair and captivating brown eyes, who wore the mantle of command easily.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, sir,” Lafayette replied. Though the two men shared the same rank, were the same age, and had been friends since their midshipmen days, Lafayette deferred to Decatur as the squadron commander and captain of the Intrepid.

Henry was as tall as Decatur but had the slender build of a master fencer. His eyes were so dark they appeared black, and in the native garb he had donned as a disguise he cut as dashing a figure as the legendary pirate they hoped to one day face, Suleiman Al-Jama. Born in Quebec, Lafayette had crossed into Vermont as soon as he turned sixteen. He wanted to be part of America’s experiment in democracy. He already spoke passable English, so he anglicized his first name from Henri and became an American citizen. He joined the Navy after a decade working the timber schooners of Lake Champlain.

There were eighty men crammed onto the sixty-foot ketch, though only a few wore disguises. The rest were to hide behind her gunwale or wait in the hold when the Intrepid sailed past the stone breakwater and into Tripoli’s principal anchorage.

“Henry, I’d like you to meet Salvador Catalano. He’s going to be our pilot once we near the harbor.”

Catalano was thickset and swarthy, with a massive bush of a beard that spread across his chest. His head was covered with a filthy linen turban, and in his belt was stuck a wickedly curved knife with a red semiprecious stone set into its pommel.

“I assume he didn’t volunteer,” Lafayette whispered to Decatur as he moved to shake the pilot’s hand.

“Cost us a king’s ransom, he did,” Decatur retorted.

“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Catalano,” Henry said, grasping the Maltese’s greasy palm. “And on behalf of the crew of the USS Siren, I want to thank you for your brave service.”

Catalano threw a wide, gap-toothed grin. “The Bashaw’s corsairs have raided my ships enough times that I thought this is fitting revenge.”

“Good to have you with us,” Lafayette replied absently. His attention was already on his new, temporary home.

The Intrepid’s two masts stood tall, but several of her stays sagged, and the sails she presented to the wind were salt-crusted and oft-patched. Though her deck had been scrubbed with both lye and stones, a fetid miasma rose from the oak timbers. Henry’s eyes swam with the stench.

She was armed with only four small carronades, a type of naval cannon that slid on tracks mounted to the deck rather than rolling backward on wheels when fired. The men of the raiding party lay sprawled where they could find space on the deck, each with a musket and sword within easy reach. Most still looked like they were suffering the aftereffects of the five-day storm.

Henry grinned at Decatur. “Hell of a command you have here, sir.”

“Aye, but she’s mine. To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Lafayette, no one has yet called you captain in all your years of service.”

“True enough”—Lafayette threw a smart salute—“Captain.”

Another night would pass before the winds picked up enough for the Intrepid to make her approach on Tripoli. Through a brass telescope, Decatur and Lafayette watched the walled city slowly emerge from the vast, trackless desert. Spread along the high defensive wall and sprouting from the ramparts of the Bashaw’s castle were more than a hundred and fifty guns. Because of the seawall, called the mole, which stretched across the anchorage, they could see only the tops of the Philadelphia’s three masts.

“What do you think?” Decatur asked Henry, whom he had appointed his First Officer for the attack. They stood shoulder to shoulder behind the Maltese pilot.

Henry looked up at the Intrepid’s spread of canvas and at the wake trailing behind the little ketch. He judged their speed to be four knots. “I think if we don’t slow down we are going to enter the harbor long before sunset.”

“Should I order the topsail and jib reefed, Captain?” asked Salvador Catalano.

“It’s best we do. The moon’s going to be bright enough later on.”