ilot in the iron-clad pilot-house turned her head upstream. The water
was shoal; she had to run up the James some way before she could turn
and come back to attack the Congress. Her keel was in the mud; she was
creeping now like a land turtle, and all the iron shore was firing at
her.... She turned at last in freer water and came down the Roads.
Through the port we could see the Cumberland that we had rammed. She
had listed to port and was sinking. The water had reached her main deck;
all her men were now on the spar deck, where they yet served the pivot
guns. She fought to the last. A man of ours, stepping for one moment
through a port to the outside of the turtle's shell, was cut in two. As
the water rose and rose, the sound of her guns was like a lessening
thunder. One by one they stopped.... To the last she flew her colours.
The Cumberland went down.

"By now there had joined us the small, small James River squadron that
had been anchored far up the river. The Patrick Henry had twelve guns,
the Jamestown had two, and the Teaser one. Down they scurried like three
valiant marsh hens to aid the turtle. With the Beaufort and the Raleigh
there were five valiant pygmies, and they fired at the shore batteries,
and the shore batteries answered like an angry Jove with solid shot,
with shell, with grape, and with canister! A shot wrecked the boiler of
the Patrick Henry, scalding to death the men who were near.... The
turtle sank a transport steamer lying alongside the wharf at Newport
News, and then she rounded the point and bore down upon the Congress.

"The frigate had showed discretion, which is the better part of valour.
Noting how deeply we drew, she had slipped her cables and run aground in
the shallows where she was safe from the ram of the Merrimac. We could
get no nearer than two hundred feet. There we took up position, and
there we began to rake her, the Beaufort, the Raleigh, and the Jamestown
giving us what aid they might. She had fifty guns, and there were the
heavy shore batteries, and below her the Minnesota. This ship, also
aground in the Middle Channel, now came into action with a roar. A
hundred guns were trained upon the Merrimac. The iron hail beat down
every point, not iron-clad, that showed above our shell. The muzzle of
two guns were shot away, the stanchions, the boat davits, the flagstaff.
Again and again the flagstaff fell, and again and again we replaced it.
At last we tied the colours to the smokes