While these many attacks were being made upon the gunboats and batteries, the “Intrepid,” in which Decatur had recaptured and destroyed the “Philadelphia,” was being rapidly prepared as a fire-ship. Their plan was to load her with a hundred barrels of powder in bulk, with bags of grape and solid shot, and under cover of the night explode her in the midst of the Tripolitan war-vessels. Somers, who had been frequently in the harbor of Tripoli and knew its reefs and rocks so that he could readily thread his way through the narrow channels, asked for the opportunity to command this expedition. But Decatur’s success in boarding the “Philadelphia” had raised the chivalry of every officer and man in the fleet to a point rarely equalled in our own history, and Somers, while he did not begrudge Decatur his two epaulettes, was filled with the passion to do a deed as great, if not greater. They had been rivals since youth, and he felt that now was the opportunity to attempt a great deed for his country, though he and every man in the fleet knew that the chances of coming out alive were but one in a hundred. Somers went to Commodore Preble and urged his knowledge of the harbor as his chief claim to the service. It was an honor that a half-dozen other men sought, and not until the old commodore had weighed the chances fully did he at last agree to let Somers go. But, before consenting, Preble repeatedly warned the young officer of the desperate character of the work, and told him that on account of the Napoleonic wars the Tripolitans were short of ammunition, and that so much powder must not fall into the hands of the enemy. But Somers needed no warning. A day or two afterwards, when the preparations were nearly completed, Preble and some other officers were trying a fuse in the cabin of the “Constitution.” One of the officers, watch in hand, ventured the opinion that it burned too long and might enable the enemy to put it out before it exploded the magazine. Hearing this, Somers said, quietly,-- “I ask for no fuse at all.” He was more gentle than ever in those last few days, and as he and Decatur leaned over the hammock-nettings of “Old Ironsides,” looking towards the line of white where the sea was breaking over the outer roofs, the melancholy look seemed to deepen and the far-away expression in his eyes was of another world. Decatur knew that rather than give up his ship and his powder, Somers would blow the ship and himself to eternity.