ve them of life.

The bombardment was continued some hours with but little effect, so
far as the assailants could discover. They manifested no disposition
to surrender. The day was passing away. Lieut. Loomis called a council
of officers and put to them the question, _what further shall be
done_? An under officer suggested the propriety of firing "hot shot at
the magazine." The proposition was agreed to. The furnaces were
heated, balls were prepared, and the cannonade was resumed. The
occupants of the Fort felt relieved by the change. They could hear the
deep humming sound of the cannon balls, to which they had become
accustomed in the early part of the day, and some made themselves
merry at the supposed folly of their assailants. They knew not that
the shot was heated, and was therefore unconscious of the danger which
threatened them.

The sun was rapidly descending in the west. The tall pines and spruce
threw their shadows over the fortification. The roar of the cannon,
the sighing of the shot, the groans of the wounded, the dark shades of
approaching evening, all conspired to render the scene one of intense
gloom. They longed for the approaching night to close around them in
order that they might bury the dead, and flee to the wilderness for
safety.

Suddenly a startling phenomena presented itself to their astonished
view. The heavy embankment and timbers protecting the magazine
appeared to rise from the earth, and the next _instant_ the dreadful
explosion overwhelmed them, and the next found _two hundred and
seventy_ parents and children in the immediate presence of a holy God,
making their appeal for retributive justice upon the government who
had murdered them, and the freemen of the north who sustained such
unutterable crimes.[3]

Many were crushed by the falling earth and the timbers; many were
entirely buried in the ruins. Some were horribly mangled by the
fragments of timber and the explosion of charged shells that were in
the magazine. Limbs were torn from the bodies to which they had been
attached. Mothers and babes lay beside each other, wrapped in that
sleep which knows no waking.

The sun had set, and the twilight of evening was closing around them,
when some sixty sailors, under the officer second in command, landed,
and, without opposition, entered the Fort. The veteran sailors,
accustomed to blood and carnage, were horror-stricken as they viewed
the scene before them. They were accompanied, howe