e old captain showed him his wounds and told him how hard he had
fought. But his fury was not to be appeased. He had the white-bearded
commander led through the streets tied to a jackass--the greatest
disgrace he could have inflicted on any Moor. This was followed by five
hundred blows with a stick.

The Moorish sailors declared that the Americans had fired enchanted
shot. This, and the severe punishment of the captain of the _Tripoli_,
so scared the sailors of the city that for a year after the fierce
Bashaw found it next to impossible to muster a ship's crew. They did not
care to be treated as the men on the _Tripoli_ had been.

Such was the first lesson which the sailors of the new nation gave to
the pirates of the Mediterranean. It was the beginning of a policy which
was to put an end to the piracy which had prevailed for centuries on
those waters.

CHAPTER XI

THE YOUNG DECATUR AND HIS BRILLIANT DEEDS AT TRIPOLI

HOW OUR NAVY BEGAN AND ENDED A FOREIGN WAR

IN the ship _Essex_, one of the fleet that was sent to the Mediterranean
to deal with the Moorish pirates, there was a brave young officer named
Stephen Decatur. He was little more than a boy, for he was just past
twenty-one years of age; but he had been in the fight between the
_Enterprise_ and the _Tripoli_, and was so bold and daring that he was
sure to make his mark.

I must tell you how he first showed himself a true American. It was when
the _Essex_ was lying in the harbor at Barcelona, a seaport of Spain.
The _Essex_ was a handsome little vessel, and there was much praise of
her in the town, people of fashion came to see her and invited her
officers to their houses and treated them with great respect.

Now there was a Spanish warship lying in the port, of the kind called a
xebec, a sort of three-masted vessel common in the Mediterranean Sea.

The officers of this ship did not like to see so much respect given to
the Americans and so little to themselves. They grew jealous and angry,
and did all they could to annoy and insult the officers of the _Essex_.
Every time one of her boats rowed past the xebec it would be challenged
and ugly things said.

The Americans bore all this quietly for a while. One day Captain
Bainbridge, of the _Essex_, was talked to in an abusive way, and said
little back. Another time a boat, under command of Lieutenant Decatur,
came under the guns of the xebec, and the Spaniards on the deck hailed
him with insulting