the cloak, tried operations at a distance,
hung for a moment in the wind of indecision, then put down the match
from the gunners' hands. The Monitor darted from us, her head toward the
shoal water known as the Middle Ground. She reached it and rested
triumphant, out of all danger from our ram, and yet where she could
still protect the Minnesota.... A curious silence fell upon the Roads;
sullen like the hush before a thunderstorm, and yet not like that, for
we had had the thunderstorm. It was the stillness, perhaps, of
exhaustion. It was late afternoon, the fighting had been heavy. The air
was filled with smoke; in the water were floating spars and wreckage of
the ships we had destroyed. The weather was sultry and still. The dogged
booming of a gun from a shore battery sounded lonely and remote as a
bell buoy. The tide was falling; there were sand-bars enough between us
and Sewell's Point. We waited an hour. The Monitor was rightly content
with the Middle Ground, and would not come back for all our charming. We
fired at intervals, upon her and upon the Minnesota, but at last our
powder grew so low that we ceased. The tide continued to fall, and the
pilot had much to say.... The red sun sank in the west; the engineers
fed the ancient mariners with Montgomery coal; black smoke gushed forth
and pilots felt their way into the South Channel, and slowly, slowly
back toward Sewell's Point. The day closed in a murky evening with a
taste of smoke in the air. In the night-time the Monitor went down the
Roads to Fortress Monroe, and in the morning we took the Merrimac into
dry dock at Norfolk. Her armour was dented all over, though not pierced.
Her bow was bent and twisted, the iron beak lost in the side of the
Cumberland. Her boats were gone, and her smokestack as full of holes as
any colander, and the engines at the last gasp. Several of the guns were
injured, and coal and powder and ammunition all lacked. We put her
there--the dear and ugly warship, the first of the iron-clads--we put
her there in dry dock, and there she's apt to stay for some weeks to
come. Lieutenant Wood was sent to Richmond with the report for the
president and the secretary of the navy. He carried, too, the flag of
the Congress, and I was one of the men detailed for its charge.... And
now I have told you of the Merrimac and the Monitor."

Rising, he went to the piano, sat down and played "Malbrook s'en va-t-en
guerre." Miss Lucy took up her knitting, and kn