their eyes
kindled with indignant feelings, and they silently swore to make good
the words of their leader, by perishing, if need were, under the ruins
of the fort.

One by one the British men-of-war gallantly approached the stations
assigned them, Sir Peter Parker, in the Bristol, leading the van. The
Experiment, another fifty gun ship, came close after, and both dropped
their anchors in succession directly abreast the fort. The other
frigates followed, and ranged themselves as supports. The remaining
vessels were still working up to their stations, when the first gun
was fired, and instantly the battle begun. The quantity of powder on
the island being small, five thousand pounds in all, there was an
absolute necessity that there should be no waste. Accordingly, the
field-officers pointed the pieces in person, and the words "look to
the commodore--look to the two-deckers!" passed along the line. The
conflict soon grew terrific. The balls whistled above the heads of
the defenders, and bombs fell thick and fast within the fort; yet, in
the excitement of the moment, the men seemed totally unconscious of
danger. Occasionally a shot from one of their cannon, striking the
hull of the flag-ship, would send the splinters flying into the air;
and then a loud huzza would burst from those who worked the guns; but,
except in instances like this, the patriots fought in stern and solemn
silence. Once, when it was seen that the three men-of-war working up
to join the conflict, had become entangled among the shoals, and would
not probably be enabled to join in the fight, a general and prolonged
cheer went down the line, and taken up a second and third time, rose,
like an exulting strain, over all the uproar of the strife.

The incessant cannonade soon darkened the prospect, the smoke lying
packed along the surface of the water; while a thousand fiery tongues,
as from some hundred-headed monster, shot out incessantly, and licking
the air a moment, were gone forever. Occasionally this thick, cloudy
veil concealed all but the spars of the enemy from sight, and then the
tall masts seemed rising, by some potent spell, out of nothing;
occasionally the terrific explosions would rend and tear asunder the
curtain, and, for an instant, the black hulls would loom out
threateningly, and then disappear. The roar of three hundred guns
shook the island and fort unremittingly: the water that washed the
sand-beach, gasped with a quick ebb and flow,