ept slowly and puffing black smoke into the
South Channel. The pilot, in his iron-clad pilot-house no bigger than a
hickory nut, put her head to the northwest. The turtle began to swim
toward Newport News.

"Until now not a few of us within her shell, and almost all of the
soldiers and the forts along the shore, had thought her upon a trial
trip only,--down the Elizabeth, past Craney Island, turn at Sewell's
Point, and back to the dock of the Gosport Navy Yard! When she did not
turn, the cheering on the shore stopped; you felt the breathlessness.
When she passed the point and took to the South Channel, when her head
turned upstream, when she came abreast of the Middle Ground, when they
saw that the turtle was going to fight, from along the shore to Craney
and from Sewell's Point there arose a yell. Every man in grey yelled.
They swung hat or cap; they shouted themselves hoarse. All the flags
streamed suddenly out, trumpets blared, the sky lifted, and we drank the
sunshine in like wine; that is, some of us did. To others it came cold
like hemlock against the lip. Fear is a horrible sensation. I was
dreadfully afraid--"

"Edward!"

"Dreadfully. But you see I didn't tell any one I was afraid, and that
makes all the difference! Besides, it wore off.... It was a spring day
and high tide, and the Federal works at Newport News and the Congress
and the Cumberland and the more distant Minnesota all looked asleep in
the calm, sweet weather. Washing day it was on the Congress, and clothes
were drying in the rigging. That aspect as of painted ships, painted
breastworks, a painted sea-piece, lasted until the turtle reached
mid-channel. Then the other side woke up. Upon the shore appeared a blue
swarm--men running to and fro. Bugles signalled. A commotion, too, arose
upon the Congress and the Cumberland. Her head toward the latter ship,
the turtle puffed forth black smoke and wallowed across the channel. An
uglier poor thing you never saw, nor a bolder! Squat to the water,
belching black smoke, her engines wheezing and repining, unwieldy of
management, her bottom scraping every hummock of sand in all the shoaly
Roads--ah, she was ugly and courageous! Our two small gunboats, the
Raleigh and the Beaufort, coming from Norfolk, now overtook us,--we went
on together. I was forward with the crew of the 7-inch pivot gun. I
could see through the port, above the muzzle. Officers and men, we were
all cooped under the turtle's shell; in orde