A half-hour more passed.  The ketch was now close aboard the frigate-like craft, steering directly towards it.  Despite the seeming security of the harbor, there were sentries posted on the frigate and officers moving about its deck.  From one of these now came a loud hail in the Tripolitan tongue.

“What craft is that?”

“The Mastico, from Malta,” came the answer, in the same language.

“Keep off.  Do you want to run afoul of us?”

“We would like to ride beside you for the night,” came the answer.  “We have lost our anchors in a gale.”

The conversation continued, in the Tripolitan language, as the ketch crept slowly up, an officer of the frigate and the pilot of the smaller vessel being the spokesmen.  A number of Moorish sailors were looking with mild curiosity over the frigate’s rails, without a moment’s suspicion that anything was wrong.  The moon still dimly lit up the waters of the bay, but not with light enough to make any object very distinct.

As the ketch came close a boat was lowered with a line, and was rowed towards the frigate, to whose fore-chains the end was made fast.  At the same time the officer of the large vessel, willing to aid the seemingly disabled coaster, ordered some of his men to lower a boat and take a line from the stern to the ketch.  As the boat of the latter returned, it met the frigate’s boat, took the line from the hands of its crew, and passed it in to the smaller vessel.

The ketch was now fast to the frigate bow and stern.  The lines were passed to the men lying on the deck, none of whom were visible from the frigate’s rail, and were slowly passed from hand to hand by the men, the coaster thus being cautiously drawn closer to the obliging Moorish craft.

All this took time.  Foot by foot the ketch drew nearer, her motion being almost imperceptible.  The Moors looked lazily over their bulwark, fancying that it was but the set of the current that was bringing the vessels together.  But suddenly there was a change.  The officer of the frigate had discovered that the ketch was still provided with anchors, despite the story that her anchors had been lost in a gale.

“What is this?” he cried, sternly.  “You have your anchors!  You have lied to me!  Keep off!  Cut those fasts there!”

A moment afterwards the cry of “Amerikanos!” was raised in the ship, and a number of the night-watch drew their knives and hastened fore and aft to cut the fasts.

The crew of the Mastico—­or the Intrepid, to give it its proper name—­were still more alert.  At the first signal of alarm, their cautious pull on the ropes was changed to a vigorous effort which sent the ketch surging through the water to the side of the frigate, where she was instantly secured by grappling-irons, hurled by strong hands.

Up to this moment not a movement or whisper had betrayed the presence of the men crouched on the deck.  The ten or twelve who were visible seemed to constitute the whole crew of the craft.  But now there came a sudden change.  The stirring cry of “Boarders away!” was raised in stentorian tones, and in an instant the deck of the Intrepid seemed alive.  The astonished Moors gazed with startled eyes at a dense crowd of men who had appeared as suddenly as if they had come from the air.