Corsair

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.

A small explosion shook the Philadelphia, knocking Henry into John Jackson.

“Let’s go, lad.”

They clambered out one of the ports. Men on the Intrepid were there to help them settle in on the small ketch. Crewmen slapped Henry’s back several times. He thought they were congratulating him on a job well done, but in fact they were putting out the smoldering cloth of his native shirt.

Above them on the rail, Stephen Decatur stood with one boot up on the bulwark.

“Captain,” Lafayette shouted, “lower decks are clear.”

“Very good, Lieutenant.” He waited for a couple of his men to climb down ropes and then descended to his ship.

The Philadelphia was engulfed in fire. Flames shot from her gunports and were starting to climb her rigging. Soon, the heat would be intense enough to cook off the powder charges in her cannons, eight of which were aimed directly at the Intrepid.

The forward line holding the ketch to the frigate was cast off easily enough, but the stern line jammed. Henry pushed men aside and drew his sword. The rope was nearly an inch thick, and his blade, dulled by combat, still sliced it clean with one blow.

With the fire consuming so much air, the ketch couldn’t fill her sails, and the jib was dangerously close to tangling with the Philadelphia ’s burning rigging. The men used oars to try to force their vessel away from the floating pyre, but as soon as they pushed free the conflagration drew them back in again.

Bits of burning sail from the frigate’s mainmast fell like confetti. One sailor’s hair caught fire.

“Henry,” Decatur bellowed, “unship the boat and tow us free.”

“Aye, aye.”

Henry, Jackson, and four others lowered the dinghy. With a line secured to the Intrepid’s bow, they pulled away from the ketch. When the rope came taut, they heaved against the oars, straining to gain inches. When they pulled the paddles from the water for another stroke, half the distance they had gained was lost to the fire-born wind.

“Pull, you sons of dogs,” Henry shouted. “Pull!”

And they did. Heaving against the sixty-four deadweight tons of their ship and the powerful suction of the fire, they fought stubbornly. The men hauled on the oars until the vertebrae crackled in their backs and veins bulged from their necks. They pulled their ship and crew away from the Philadelphia until Decatur could get sails up her mainmast and fill them with the slight breeze now blowing in from the desert.

There was a sudden bloom of light high up on the castle wall. A moment later came the concussive roar of a cannon. The shot landed well beyond the ketch and rowboat, but it was followed by a dozen more. The water came alive with tiny dimples—small-arms fire from lookouts and guards running along the breakwater.

Aboard the Intrepid, men manned the oars, rowing for everything they were worth, while behind them the Philadelphia suddenly flared as the remainder of her canvas caught fire.

For twenty tense minutes, the men pulled while, around them, shot after shot hit the water. One ball passed through the Intrepid’s topgallant sail, but other than that the ship wasn’t struck. The small-arms fire died away first, and then they were beyond the reach of the Bashaw’s cannons. The exhausted men collapsed into each other, laughing and singing. In their wake, the walls of the fortress were lit with the wavering glow of the burning ship.

Henry brought the dinghy about and slipped it under the davits.

“Well done, my friend.” Decatur was smiling, his face reflecting the ethereal glimmer behind them.

Too exhausted to do anything but pant, Henry threw Decatur a weak salute.

All eyes suddenly turned toward the harbor as the raging towers that were the Philadelphia’s masts slowly collapsed across her port side in an explosion of sparks. And then, as a final salute, her guns cooked off, an echoing cannonade that sent some balls across the water and others into the castle walls.

The men roared at her act of defiance against the Barbary pirates.

“What now, Captain?” Lafayette asked,

Decatur stared across the sea, not looking at Henry when he spoke. “This won’t end tonight. I recognized one of the corsairs in the harbor. It was Suleiman Al-Jama’s. She’s called the Saqr. It means falcon. You can bet your last penny that he’s making ready to sail against us this very moment. The Bashaw won’t take vengeance on our captured sailors for what we did tonight—they are too valuable to him—but Al-Jama will want revenge.”

“He was once a holy man, right?”

“Up until a few years ago,” Decatur agreed. “He was what the Muslims called an Imam. Kind of like a priest. Such was his hate for Christendom that he decided preaching wasn’t enough, and he took up arms against any and all ships not flying a Muslim flag.”

“I heard tell that he takes no prisoners.”

“I’ve heard the same. The Bashaw can’t be too happy about that since prisoners can be ransomed, but he holds little sway over Al-Jama. The Bashaw made a deal with the devil when he let Al-Jama occasionally stage out of