ubbornness, went to the bottom in fifty feet of water with
colors flying.

Having sunk the _Cumberland_, the _Merrimac_ next turned her attention
to the _Congress_, which had meanwhile run into shoal water and grounded
where the rebel vessel could not follow. But the _Merrimac_, being
herself apparently proof against shot and shell by her iron plating,
took up a raking position two cables' length away, and during an hour's
firing deliberately reduced the _Congress_ to helplessness and to
surrender--her commander being killed and the vessel set on fire. The
approach, the manoeuvering, and the two successive combats consumed the
afternoon, and toward nightfall the _Merrimac_ and her three small
consorts that had taken little part in the action withdrew to the rebel
batteries on the Virginia shore: not alone because of the approaching
darkness and the fatigue of the crew, but because the rebel ship had
really suffered considerable damage in ramming the _Cumberland_, as well
as from one or two chance shots that entered her port-holes.

That same night, while the burning _Congress_ yet lighted up the waters
of Hampton Roads, a little ship, as strange-looking and as new to marine
warfare as the rebel turtleback herself, arrived by sea in tow from New
York, and receiving orders to proceed at once to the scene of conflict,
stationed herself near the grounded _Minnesota_. This was Ericsson's
"cheese-box on a raft," named by him the _Monitor_. The Union officers
who had witnessed the day's events with dismay, and were filled with
gloomy forebodings for the morrow, while welcoming this providential
reinforcement, were by no means reassured. The _Monitor_ was only half
the size of her antagonist, and had only two guns to the other's ten.
But this very disparity proved an essential advantage. With only ten
feet draft to the _Merrimac's_ twenty-two, she not only possessed
superior mobility, but might run where the _Merrimac_ could not follow.
When, therefore, at eight o'clock on Sunday, March 9, the _Merrimac_
again came into Hampton Roads to complete her victory, Lieutenant John
L. Worden, commanding the _Monitor_, steamed boldly out to meet her.

Then ensued a three hours' naval conflict which held the breathless
attention of the active participants and the spectators on ship and
shore, and for many weeks excited the wonderment of the reading world.
If the _Monitor's_ solid eleven-inch balls bounded without apparent
effect from t