The perfect quiet of the golden afternoon was broken when around the headland came sailing another small but beautiful cruiser, schooner-rigged, and wearing American colors. As soon as she had weathered the point of land, and had got fully abreast of the Constitution, her guns barked out a salute to the commodore’s pennant flying on the Constitution, which the frigate acknowledged. The schooner had a handsome figurehead, and on her stern was painted, in gold letters, “Argus.” She came to anchor in first-class man-of-war style, close under the Constitution’s quarter, and in a wonderfully short time her sails were furled, and her anchor had kissed the ground, the cable emitting sparks of fire as it rushed out of the hawse-hole. In a quarter of an hour her gig was lowered, and her young commander, Stephen Decatur, stepped into the boat and was pulled toward the Constitution. At that time neither he nor Somers was turned of twenty-four, although both were commanding officers.
As the boat shot past the Nautilus, Decatur stood up and waved his cap at the officers, but he observed that Somers was not among them. A captain’s gig, though, looking like a mere speck under the great quarter of the Constitution, made Decatur surmise that Somers was at that moment on board the flagship. The two had parted only six weeks before, when, Somers’s vessel being ready in advance of Decatur’s, he had sailed to join Commodore Preble’s squadron in the Mediterranean. The prospect of seeing Somers again raised Decatur’s naturally gay and jovial spirits to the highest pitch, and he tried to distinguish among the officers scattered about the Constitution’s decks the handsome, lithe figure of his friend. While watching the frigate as he advanced toward it, he saw another boat come alongside; an officer stepped out and ran lightly up the ladder, while the boat pulled back to the shore. Decatur was struck by the fact that this officer, who was obviously a young man, wore two epaulets. In those days only flag officers were allowed to wear two—all others wearing but one. Commodore Preble was, in fact, the only man in the whole American fleet then in European waters who was entitled to wear two epaulets. Decatur was much puzzled by the officer’s uniform, and the only explanation that occurred to him was that the gallant Preble had been superseded—an event which would have filled him with regret. Although the commodore was a stranger to him, Decatur had conceived the highest respect for his abilities, and had heard much of his vigor and enterprise, to say nothing of his untamable temper, which at first the officers chafed under, but had soon come to regard as “Old Pepper’s way,” for so the midshipmen had dubbed Commodore Preble.