The frigate’s boat containing the fast had now put out. Lawrence, rowing back to the ketch, met the Tripolitan boat.
“Give us your fast,” he said, “so we can let go another hawser. We lost our best cables with the anchors, and our hawsers are so small that it will take two to hold us in case the wind should rise during the night.”
The Tripolitans handed out the fasts, which Lawrence coolly carried on board the Intrepid. The men on deck, catching hold of the fast, then drew the ketch close to the frigate’s huge black hull, and were soon breasting along under her port side.
The shadow cast by the Philadelphia’s hull was of immense help to the Intrepid’s men, but near her stern was a great patch of white moonlight, and any object passing through this glittering and shimmering belt could be seen as plainly as in daytime. As the ketch glided steadily along and into this brilliant light, her anchors, with their cables coiled up, were seen on her decks.
“Keep off!” shouted the Tripolitan officer, suddenly taking the alarm; “you have deceived us—you have not lost your anchors, and we do not know your character,” and at the same moment he ordered men with the axes to cut the fasts. But, as if by enchantment, the deck of the Intrepid was alive with men, whose strong arms brought her grinding up against the frigate’s side in a moment’s time. Then a great yell went up from the frigate:
“_Americanos! Americanos!_” cried the Tripolitans.
The next instant Decatur, who was standing ready, made a powerful spring, and jumped at the Philadelphia’s chain-plates, shouting at the same moment:
Morris and Laws, two of the midshipmen of the Constitution, were at Decatur’s side clinging to the frigate’s plates. Morris and Decatur both sprang at the rail, and Morris, being little more than a boy, and very lithe and agile, his foot touched the quarter-deck first. But Decatur was second. Laws had dashed at an open porthole, and would have been the first on the frigate, but his boarding belt, with his pistols in it, caught between the gun and the port, so that he was third.
Instantly, in the dazzling moonlight, turbaned heads appeared over the rail and at every port. The Americans came pouring over the side, and as the Tripolitans rushed above they found the quarter-deck already in possession of the “Americanos.” The Tripolitans ran forward and to starboard. The Americans, quickly forming a line across the deck, and headed by Decatur, dashed at them, and, caught between an advancing body of resolute seamen and the ship’s rail, those who were not cut down, after a short but desperate resistance, leaped overboard. The Americans were more than a match for them in hand-to-hand fighting, at which they excelled, and they fought in disorder. In five minutes the spar deck was cleared and in possession of the Americans.