vil plays? Dance, you lazy blacklegs; dance on
nothing! Ha, ha!"

No man has ever looked on a more awful sight. We had struck the
battleship low amidships--we had crashed through the thinnest coat of
her steel. She had heeled right over from the shock, so that the guns
had cast free from the carriages, and the sea had filled her. Thus for
one terrible minute she lay, her men crowding upon her starboard side,
or jumping into the sea, or making desperate attempts to get her boats
free; and then, with a heavy lurch, she rolled beneath the waves; and
there were left but thirty or forty struggling souls, who battled for
their lives with the great rollers of the Atlantic. Of these a few
reached the side of our ship and were shot there as they clung to the
ladder; a few swam strongly in the desperate hope that the brutes about
me would relent, and sank at last with piercing and piteous cries upon
their lips; others died quickly, calling upon God as they went to their
rest.

For ourselves we lay, our bows split with the shock, our engine-room in
fearful disorder, our men drunk with ferocity and with despair. The
other warships were yet some distance away; but they opened fire upon
us at hazard, and, of the first three shells which fell, two cut our
decks; and sent clouds of splinters, of wood, and of human flesh flying
in the smoke-laden air. At the fifth shot, a gigantic crash resounded
from below, and the stokers rushed above with the news that the fore
stoke-hold had three feet of water in it. The hands received the news
with a deep groan; then with curses and recriminations. They bellowed
like bulls at Black; they refused all orders. He shot down man after
man, while I crouched for safety in the tower; and they became but
fiercer. Our end was evidently near; and, knowing this, they fell upon
the liquor, and were worse than fiends. Anon they turned upon the
captain and myself, and fired volleys upon the conning-tower; or, in
their terrible frenzy, they pitched themselves into the sea, or raved
with drunken songs, and vented their vengeance upon the Irishman,
"Four-Eyes," chasing him wildly, and stabbing him with many cuts, so
that he dropped dying at our door, with no more reproach than the
simple words--

"God help me! but had I died in me own counthry I would have known more
pace."

Through all this our one engine worked; and so slowly did the great
ironclad draw upon us that the end of it all came before they could