tes, Morocco and Tunis, began to be
impudent because they did not get enough money.

This was more than our people could stand. These scamps needed a
lesson.

{157} You will, of course, remember Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the
Declaration of Independence. He was at this time President of the
United States. As you may well think, he was not the man to put up
with such insults.

[Illustration: Thomas Jefferson]

"It reminds me," said Jefferson, "of what my good friend, Ben
Franklin, once said in his Poor Richard's Almanac: 'If you make
yourself a sheep, the wolves will eat you.' We must put a stop to
paying this blood money, and deal with these pirates with an iron
hand."

So it came to pass that Commodore Dale was sent to the Mediterranean,
with a small fleet of war ships.

When our little fleet arrived off the Barbary coast, Morocco and
Tunis stopped grumbling and soon came to terms. We were then free to
deal with Tripoli.

Our war ships had orders simply to look after our merchantmen,
without doing any fighting. Still, to give the proud ruler of Tripoli
a hint of what he might soon expect, one of our small vessels, the
Enterprise, afterwards {158} commanded by Decatur, fought a short but
furious battle with a Tripolitan man-of-war.

The pirate captain hauled his flag down three times, but hoisted it
again when the fire of the Enterprise ceased. This insult was too
much for Dale. Bringing his vessel alongside the pirate craft, he
sprang over her side, followed by fifty of his men. The pirate crew,
with their long curved swords, fought hard; yet in fifteen minutes
they were beaten.

[Illustration: Fight between Dale and the Tripolitan Pirates]

Our sailors now cut away the masts of the enemy's vessel, and,
stripping her of everything except one old sail and a single spar,
let her drift back to Tripoli, as a hint of how the new nation across
the Atlantic was likely to deal with pirates.

"Tell your pasha," shouted the American captain, as the Barbary ship
drifted away, "that this is the way my country will pay him tribute
after this."

In the year 1803, the command of our fleet was given to Commodore
Preble, who had just forced the ruler of Morocco to pay for an attack
upon one of our merchant ships. The famous frigate Constitution,
better known to every wide-awake American boy and girl as "Old
Ironsides," was his flagship.

Among his officers, or "schoolboy captains," as he called them, were
many brig