Preble finished his business, and the Argus, carrying Preble and Eaton, traveled to Malta, arriving on the night of October 23. The port of La Valette boasts one of the finest natural deep-draft harbors in the world, running inland almost two miles, with the city on a high spit of land. The harbor throat, or entrance, a mere four hundred yards wide, is flanked by huge batteries of cannons. The land surrounding the harbor is steep enough “that the largest ships of war might ride out the stormiest weather almost without a cable,” according to an American officer. The city, built on a hill, contained streets so nearly vertical that steps had to be carved into the stone. The sun glinted blindingly off the white freestone houses.
British quarantine rules, which required seven days’ wait for all ships coming from Sicily, kept restless Eaton on board ship in the harbor. He took the time to read the logbooks to help him on his history of the naval war. He planned to write of Preble’s heroics, which would glow in sharp contrast to the laziness and cowardliness of Eaton’s enemies, Murray and Morris; each word of praise would be a dagger to Murray.
Eaton, after all the waiting and forced sightseeing, expected to leave any day for Alexandria when Commodore Barron suddenly decided on October 27 to dispatch the Argus to go look for the ships on blockade duty: Congress, Constellation, and Nautilus. Barron had received news of a severe gale off Tripoli and wanted the Argus to check for damage and replace any ships, if necessary. Eaton’s mission clearly rated bottom end.
To make matters worse, Eaton discovered that Barron was deathly ill and growing almost incapable of making decisions. Barron had already spent ten days onshore in Syracuse trying to recuperate; he had tried reboarding his ship, but he only grew worse from what was described as “an affection of the liver.” The commodore who, when well, had been vague and polite toward Eaton, was now so ill that he could hardly think straight. Eaton, never the most politic one, didn’t hesitate to write the truth to the secretary of the navy: “The physician Doc Cutbush has been under serious apprehensions of alarm . . . and I much fear [Barron] will not have sufficient health to transact the business . . . preparatory to the operations of next spring and summer.”
At the end of October, Eaton found himself marooned in Quarantine Harbor of Malta, awaiting the return of the Argus. He grew even crabbier; everything set him off. He scribbled in his notebook that while his friend Dr. Babbit, also of Massachusetts, had just received a letter from home dated September 2, he hadn’t received any mail from his wife, Eliza. He had sent her a letter “three months and six days” earlier. “Why not an answer!” he fumed in thick letters, etched deep in his notebook.
Around this time, Colonel Tobias Lear, the new U.S. negotiator for Barbary, who with his wife had taken up residence in civilized Malta, paid Eaton a visit. Lear had himself rowed out in the harbor. The meeting was conducted politely, but the men barely concealed their disdain for each other. From Eaton’s point of view, Tobias Lear during that visit looked Eaton in the eye and told him a bald-faced lie. He informed Eaton that Thomas Jefferson refused to grant permission to American consuls to pay tribute to Tunis or Tripoli. (Eaton, of course, had already read the April 9, 1803, State Department document allowing tribute, preferably in secret.) “I have sometimes seen a brave man dishonest,” wrote Eaton of Lear. “I never saw a coward who was not.”
Eaton and his new friend, Preble, were Old Testament on the subject of tribute: The honor of the United States forbids the payment of a single penny to Barbary pirates in public or in private. He railed in his notebook that Jefferson was abandoning his own position on not paying tribute. “To secure himself in the secrecy of this disgraceful secession, [he] has placed his entire confidence, relative to our diplomatic intercourse with Barbary, in a man who has only distinguished himself for his treachery to the memory of the man who created him.” Eaton was referring to the fact that Lear had jumped from working for George Washington, the king of Federalists, to serving Jefferson, arch-Republican. Eaton, in quarantined limbo, seemed to be becoming a bit unhinged. Across the top of one page, he scrawled: “Colonel Lear not to be leered at!!!” Three exclamation points and two underlines.
Lear, for his part, despised Eaton as well. On November 3, Lear in a long letter to Secretary of State Madison wrote a starkly negative assessment of Eaton’s mission. “I presume the co-operation of the Brother of the Bashaw of Tripoli will not be attempted. Our force is thought sufficient to compel him to terms without this aid, and in any event it is very doubtful whether he has it in his power . . . to render us service. He is now in Egypt, driven by his brother from Derne, where it is presumed he might have made a stand, had he been a man of any force or influence; which from the best accounts I can collect, he is not.