time to jump back aboard before his ship had put twenty feet between herself and the pirate vessel. He was trapped on the
The Arabs manning the
He instinctively went on the charge before the man could fully comprehend what he was seeing. Henry pulled one of his pistols with his left hand and fired an instant before his shoulder collided with the man’s chest.
As they tumbled over the railing, he recognized the distinctive white streaks in the other man’s beard: Suleiman Al-Jama.
They hit the bath-warm water tangled together. Henry broke the surface to find Al-Jama next to him, gasping to fill his lungs. He was thrashing wildly, but oddly, too. It was then that Henry noticed the dark stain on the otherwise white robe. The ball from his pistol had hit the captain at the shoulder joint, and he couldn’t lift that arm.
Looking quickly, he saw the
Al-Jama’s efforts to keep his head above water were growing weaker. He still couldn’t get his lungs to reinflate, and his heavy robes were dragging him under. Henry had been a strong swimmer his entire life, but it was clear the Arab was not. His head vanished below the surface for a moment, and he came up sputtering. But not once did he cry out for help.
He went under again, longer this time, and when he returned to the surface he could barely keep his lips out of the water. Henry kicked off his heavy boots and used his dirk to slice open Al-Jama’s robe. The clothing floated free, but Al-Jama wouldn’t last another minute.
The coastline was at least three miles distant, and Henry Lafayette wasn’t sure if he could make it at all let alone while towing the pirate, but Suleiman Al-Jama’s life was in his hands now and he had the responsibility to do everything in his power to save him.
He reached around Al-Jama’s bare chest. The captain thrashed to push him off.
Henry said, “The moment we fell off the ship, you stopped being my enemy, but I swear to God that if you fight me I’ll let you drown.”
“I would rather,” Suleiman replied in heavily accented English.
“Have it your way, then.” With that, Henry pulled his second pistol and smashed it into Al-Jama’s temple. Grabbing the unconscious man under one arm, he started paddling for shore.
ONE
WASHINGTON, D . C .
ST. JULIAN PERLMUTTER SHIFTED HIS CONSIDERABLE BULK in the backseat of his 1955 Rolls-Royce Silver Dawn. He plucked a tulip flute of vintage champagne off the fold-down table in front of him, took a delicate sip, and continued reading. Stacked next to the champagne and a plate of canapes were photocopies of letters sent to Admiral Charles Stewart over the length of his incredible career. Stewart had served every President from John Adams to Abraham Lincoln, and had been awarded more commands than any officer in American history. The original letters were safely tucked away in the Rolls’s trunk.
As perhaps the leading naval historian in the world, Perlmutter deplored the fact that some philistine had subjected the letters to the ravages of a photocopier—light damages paper and fades ink—but he wasn’t above taking advantage of the gaffe, and he started reading the copies as soon as he had settled in for the drive back from Cherry Hill, New Jersey.
He’d been after this collection for years, and it had taken his considerable charm, and a rather large check, to see that it wasn’t given to the government and archived in some out-of-the-way location. If the letters turned out to be uninteresting, he planned to keep the copies for reference and donate the originals for the tax benefit.
He glanced out the window. The traffic into the nation’s capital was murder, as usual, but Hugo Mulholland, his longtime chauffeur and assistant, seemed to be handling it well. The Rolls glided down I-95 as if it were the only car on the road.
The collection had passed through numerous generations of the Stewart family, but the branch that held them now was dying out. The only child of Mary Stewart Kilpatrick, whose row house Perlmutter had just left, had no interest in it, and her only grandchild was severely autistic. St. Julian really didn’t begrudge the price he’d paid, knowing the money would help support the boy.
The letter he was reading was to the Secretary of War, Joel Roberts Poinsett, and had been written during Stewart’s first command of the Philadelphia Navy Yard between 1838 and 1841. The letter’s contents were rather dry: lists of supplies needed, progress on the repairs of a frigate, remarks about the quality of sails they had received. Though competent at his job, it was clear in the writing that Stewart would much rather captain a ship again than oversee the facility.
Perlmutter set it aside, popped a canape in his mouth, and washed it down with another sip of champagne. He leafed through a couple more letters, settling on one written to Stewart by a bosun who had served under his command during the Barbary Wars. The writing was barely legible, and the author, one John Jackson, appeared to have had limited schooling. He reminisced about being a part of the raid to burn the USS
St. Julian was well aware of these exploits. He’d read Captain Decatur’s firsthand account of the burning of the American frigate, although there wasn’t much material on the fight with the
Reading the letter, St. Julian could almost smell the gun smoke and hear the screams as the
In the letter, Jackson asked the admiral about the fate of the brig’s second-in-command, Henry Lafayette. Perlmutter recalled that the young lieutenant had leapt aboard the Tripolian ship a moment before her cannons
