[Illustration: BATTLE OF LISSA
THE AUSTRIAN ATTACK AT THE BEGINNING OF THE BATTLE]

As the fleets closed the Austrians opened fire, aiming, not at the armoured
sides of the enemy, which no gun of theirs could penetrate, but at their
port-holes and bridges. Tegethoff in his flagship the "Ferdinand Max" was
looking for something to ram, but in the dense mass of smoke he passed
through the wide gap between Vacca's division and the "Re d'Italia,"
then finding no enemy in his front, he turned and went back into the battle
fog of the Italian centre. The three ironclads on his left ("Hapsburg,"
"Salamander," and "Kaiser Max") were engaged with Vacca's division, the van
of the Italian fleet. The three others, "Don Juan," "Drache," and "Prinz
Eugen," had flung themselves on Faa di Bruno's ships in the centre. Von
Petz coming up with the wooden ships gallantly attacked Ribotti's rearward
division, any one of which should in theory have been able to dispose of
his entire force. The gunboats hung on the margin of the fight, which had
now become a confused melee. And while the Austrian wooden ships were thus
risking themselves in close action, Albini's Italian division of wooden
ships looked on from a safe distance.

One can only tell some of the striking incidents of the battle, without
being able even to fix the precise order of time in which they occurred.
When the "Merrimac" sank the "Cumberland" with one blow of her ram in
Hampton Roads, the Federal ship was at anchor. But even in the confusion
and semi-darkness of the melee at Lissa it was found that it was not such
an easy matter to ram a ship under way. The blow was generally eluded by a
turn of the helm. Von Petz's flagship, the old three-decker "Kaiser,"
towering amid the battle-smoke, attracted the attention of Persano in the
"Affondatore," and seemed an easy victim for his ram. But the big ironclad
was unhandy, and took eight minutes to turn a full circle, and twice Petz
eluded her attack. The two 300-pounders of the "Affondatore" did much
damage on board the "Kaiser," but the wooden ship's broadside swept the
upper works of the ram as the two vessels passed each other, and strewed
her deck with wreckage. The fire of the heavy rifled guns on the Italian
ironclads did severe execution on the Austrian wooden ships. The captain of
the "Novara" was killed; the "Erzherzog Friedrich" and the "Schwarzenberg"
were badly hulled, and leaked so that they were only kept af