at a haunt of pirates on the coast of Cuba,
where Lieutenant Allen, a navy officer, had been killed the year before
in an attack on the sea-robbers.

Here there were over seventy pirates and only thirty-one Americans. But
the sailors cried "Remember Allen!" and dashed so fiercely at the pirate
vessels, that the cowardly crews jumped overboard and tried to swim
ashore. But the hot-blooded sailors rowed in among them and cut fiercely
with their cutlasses, so that hardly any of them escaped. Their leader,
who was named Diabolito, or "Little Devil," was one of the killed.

In this way the pirate hordes were broken up, after they had robbed and
murdered among the beautiful West India islands for many years. After
that defeat they gave no more trouble. Among the pirates was Jean
Lafitte, one of the Lafitte brothers, of whose doings you have read
above. After the battle of New Orleans he went to Texas, and in time
became a pirate captain again. As late as 1822 his name was the terror
of the Gulf. Then he disappeared and no one knew what had become of him.
He may have died in battle or have gone down in storm.

But the pirates of the West Indies and the Gulf were not the only ones
the United States had to deal with. You have read the story of the
Moorish corsairs and of the fighting at Tripoli. Now I have something
more to tell about them; for when they heard that the United States was
at war with England, they tried their old tricks again, capturing
American sailors and selling them for slaves.

They had their own way until the war was over. Then two squadrons of war
vessels were sent to the Mediterranean, one under Commodore Bainbridge,
who had commanded the _Constitution_ when she fought the _Java_, and the
other under Commodore Decatur, the gallant sailor who had burned the
_Philadelphia_ in the harbor of Tripoli.

Decatur got there first, and it did not take him long to bring the Moors
to their senses. The trouble this time was with Algiers, not with
Tripoli. Algiers was one of the strongest of the Moorish states.

On the 15th of June, 1815, Decatur came in sight of the most powerful of
the Algerine ships, a forty-six gun frigate, the _Mashouda_. Its
commander was Rais Hammida, a fierce and daring fellow, who was called
"the terror of the Mediterranean." He had risen from the lowest to the
highest place in the navy, and had often shown his valor in battle. But
his time for defeat had now come.

When the Moorish admi