Drawing nearer still, the pirates lining the rail were a good fifteen feet above the Intrepid’s deck. They began muttering among themselves and pointing as they made out the shapes of men cowering behind the ketch’s gunwales.
Ten feet still separated the ships when one pirate shouted. “Americanos!”
“Tell your men to attack,” Catalano wailed.
“No order to be obeyed but that of the commanding officer,” Decatur said evenly.
Above them, the Barbary pirates were drawing their swords, and one fumbled with the blunderbuss strapped across his back. A cry went up just as the oak hulls came together, and Decatur shouted, “Board her!”
Henry Lafayette touched the Bible he kept on him at all times and leapt for an open gunport, hooking one hand around the wooden edge and clasping the warm bronze cannon with the other. He kicked his legs through the gap between the gun and the side of the ship and came up on his feet, his blade keening as he drew it from its scabbard. By the light of a single lamp hanging from the low ceiling, he saw two pirates wheeling back from another gunport as more men scrambled aboard. One of the pirates turned and saw him. The pirate’s broad scimitar was suddenly in his hand as his bare feet pounded the decking. He shrieked as he charged, a technique most appropriate when confronting unarmed and untrained merchant sailors.
Henry wasn’t fazed. The fear he had been sure would paralyze him had turned to cold rage.
He let the man come, and as the pirate began a hip-high cutting stroke that would have sliced Henry in half Henry stepped forward lightly and sank his blade into the other man’s chest. The force of the pirate’s charge ran the steel through his ribs and out his back. The heavy scimitar clattered to the deck as the corsair slumped against Lafayette. He had to use his knee as leverage to pull his blade from the pirate’s chest. Henry whirled at a moving shadow and ducked under the swinging arc of an ax aimed at his shoulder. He counter-cut back with his sword, the edge slicing through cloth, skin, and muscle. He hadn’t had the angle to eviscerate his foe, but the amount of blood that gushed from the wound told him the pirate was out of the fight.
The gun deck was a scene out of hell. Dark figures hacked and slashed at one another with abandon. The crash of steel on steel was punctuated by screams of pain when blade met skin. The air was charged with the smell of gunpowder, but above it Henry could detect the coppery scent of blood.
He waded into the fray. With its low ceilings, the gun deck wasn’t an ideal field to battle with a sword or pike, but the Americans fought doggedly. One of them went down when he was struck from behind. Henry saw that the corsair who had hit him towered over everyone else. His turban almost brushed the support beams. He swung his scimitar at Henry, and, when Henry parried, the power of the blow made his entire arm go numb. The Arab swung again, and it took every once of strength for Lafayette to raise his blade enough to deflect the flashing sword.
He staggered back, and the pirate pressed his advantage, swinging wildly, keeping Henry on his back foot and always on the defensive. Decatur had been adamant during their planning that the raid was to be as silent as possible because of the massive pirate armada lying at anchor in the harbor. With his strength quickly waning, Lafayette had no choice but to yank his pistol from the sash around his waist. He pulled the trigger even before he had acquired his target. The small measure of powder in the pan flashed, and as the gun came up the main charge blew with a sharp report. The .58 caliber ball smashed into the pirate’s chest.
The shot would have dropped a normal man to the deck before he had time to blink, but the giant kept coming. Henry had just an instant to raise his sword as the scimitar swiped at him again. His blade saved him from having his arm cut off, but the stunning momentum tossed him bodily across the gun deck. He fell against one of the Philadelphia’s eighteen-pounders. With Decatur’s orders about silence still ringing in his ears, Lafayette fumbled for the lit oil lamp slung in a pouch around his waist and held the flame to the bronze cannon’s touchhole. He could smell the powder charge burning, although the sizzle barely registered above the sounds of the fight still raging across the ship. He kept his body between the great gun and his attacker, trusting that with his years of experience manning naval cannons his timing would be perfect.
The pirate must have sensed his opponent was spent by the way Lafayette just stood there, as if accepting the inevitable. The pirate raised his Saracen sword and started to swing, his body anticipating the resistance of the blade cutting through flesh and bone. Then the American leapt aside. The Arab was too committed to check his swing or to notice the smoke coiling from the back of the cannon. It roared an instant later in a gush of sulfurous smoke.
There were thick hemp lines designed to retard the force of the recoil and keep the gun from careening across the deck, but they still let the cannon rocket back several feet. The butt of the gun hit the pirate square in the groin, shattering his pelvis, crushing his hip joints, and splintering both thighbones. His limp body was flung against a beam, and he collapsed to the deck, folded in half—backward.
Henry took a second to peer out the gunport. The eighteen-pound cannonball had smashed into the fortress across the harbor, and an avalanche of rubble tumbled from the gaping hole.
“Two with one shot. Not bad, mon amiHenri, not bad at all.” It was John Jackson, the big bosun.
“If Captain Decatur asks, it was one of these rotters who fired the gun, eh?”
“That’s what I saw, Mr. Lafayette.”
The cannon going off had acted like a starter’s pistol at the beginning of a race. The Arab pirates abandoned their defense and began rushing for the gunports, leaping and falling into the calm waters of the harbor. Those scrambling up the ladders for the main deck would doubtless run into Decatur and his men.
“Let’s get to work.”
The men returned to the starboard side of the ship where crew-mates aboard the Intrepidwere standing by, ready to start passing combustibles up to the raiding party. Followed by Jackson and six others burdened with kegs of black powder, Henry Lafayette descended a ladder, passing crews’ quarters where hammocks still hung from the rafters but all other gear had been scavenged. They dropped lower still, to the orlop deck, the lowest on the frigate, and entered one of the ship’s holds. Most of the naval stores had been taken, but enough remained for the men to start burning the frigate.
They worked quickly. Henry decided where they would lay their fuses, and when they were set he lit them with his oil lamp. The flames grew quickly, much quicker than any of them had anticipated. In an instant, the hold filled with reeking smoke. They started back up, holding their sleeves over their mouths so they could breathe. The ceiling above them suddenly burst into flames with a roar like a cannon blast. John Jackson was knocked off his feet and would have been crushed by a burning timber if Henry hadn’t grabbed one of his legs and dragged him across the rough planking. He helped the bosun up, and they started running, their team at their heels. They had to leap and duck as chunks of flaming wood continued to crash down from above.
They reached a ladder, and Henry turned, urging his men upward. “Go, go, go, damn you, or we’re going to die down here.”
He followed Jackson’s ponderous rump as a jet of fire raced down the corridor. Henry rammed his shoulder into Jackson’s backside and heaved with everything he had. The two emerged from the hatch, rolling to the side, as a volcanic eruption of flame bellowed up from the hold, hit the ceiling, and spread like an unholy canopy.
They were in a sea of fire. The walls, deck, and ceiling were sheathed in flames, while the smoke was so thick that tears streamed from Henry’s eyes. Running blindly, he and Jackson found the next ladder and emerged on the gun deck. Smoke streamed out the ports, but enough fresh air reached them that for the first time in five minutes they could fill their lungs without coughing.