The night was dark and the _Intrepid_ was soon lost in the gloom, when at 9:47, as marked in the log of the _Constitution_, there was a terrific explosion, followed by cries of terror and beating of drums in the town and then silence. The boats which were to return never came. The bodies of the three officers and ten men were from time to time recovered by the Tripolitans, but the explosion, which evidently occurred before intended, has ever remained a mystery. Among the six names which appear on the monument now at the Naval Academy, erected by their brother officers to those killed at Tripoli, are those of the three then lost, the three other names being Caldwell, James Decatur, and Dorsey. The total loss in Preble’s squadron in these eleven months at Tripoli was thirty-two killed and twenty-two wounded. CHAPTER XIII Preble left for home without having come to terms with the Pacha of Tripoli. He was not willing to rise above $500 for each of the captives, and would offer nothing for peace or for tribute. Had he remained, it is very possible that he would have forced a peace without a ransom. Peace, however, was to come under his successor largely through one of the extraordinary adventures of our history. Yusuf Karamanli, the Pacha of Tripoli, was the youngest of three brothers. In 1790 at the age of twenty he murdered the eldest, and when his father died in 1796, and the second brother, Hamet, was absent, he proclaimed himself Pacha. Hamet, rather a weakling, took refuge in Tunis, leaving his family at Tripoli. He had taken up arms against his brother, using Derne, some 500 miles east of Tripoli, as a base, but he was unsuccessful, and in 1804 fled to Egypt. The government in Washington, influenced largely by ex-Consul Eaton, had decided to use Hamet as an asset in the war against Yusuf, and thus placed at the disposition of the commodore a moderate amount of money and military supplies. Eaton was appointed a navy agent under Commodore Barron, with a recommendation from the Secretary of the Navy to use him in connection with an effort to establish Hamet at Tripoli in place of his brother Yusuf. It was a scheme in full accord with Eaton’s adventurous spirit and worthy his real ability.