He made several cruises, reached his lieutenancy, and was attached to the Essex when she went under Captain Bainbridge to the Mediterranean, in 1802. During the troubles the officers of the Essex had, at Barcelona, with the officers of the Spanish guardship, Decatur was conspicuous. Having been annoyed and insulted by the Spanish officers, on his way to and from his ship, he went aboard the Spaniard, and asked for her commanding officer. He was absent, and Decatur left this message, which he shouted out in his tremendous voice, on the Spanish quarterdeck: "Tell him that Lieutenant Decatur of the Essex declares him to be a scoundrelly coward; and if Lieutenant Decatur meets him ashore, he will cut his ears off!" A duel in the case was narrowly averted. At twenty-four Decatur got his first command, the Argus, one of the two sixteen-gun brigs which were to assist Commodore Preble in the reduction of the Barbary powers. This was a heavier vessel than a young officer of Decatur's rank was entitled to, and he was given the command of her only to take her out of the Mediterranean, where he was to exchange with Isaac Hull, then a lieutenant commandant, and take Hull's vessel, the Enterprise, schooner, of twelve guns. The Enterprise, like the great frigates Constitution and Constellation, was a favorite of fortune. She had a glorious record for so small a vessel, and fought ten spirited actions during her career, winding up with the capture of the Boxer in the war of 1812-15. She was lucky also in escaping many times from superior force, and had an uninterrupted course of success. Her good fortune really consisted in the people who manned her, and the officers who commanded her,--of whom Decatur was not the least distinguished. He had the good fortune to have as his first lieutenant in the little schooner James Lawrence, a man after Decatur's own heart, who was worthy of his ship and his captain. Decatur was one of the young commanders who took part in the council of war called by Commodore Preble at Gibraltar, in the autumn of 1803, at which the peppery commodore was so disgusted that he called them "a parcel of schoolboys." But most of them were shortly destined to immortality.