the city, but they effected nothing. One of them was by the
aforementioned person. In going towards the ship he lost sight
of her, and went a great distance beyond her. When he at length
found her the tide ran so strong that, as he descended under
water for the ship's bottom, it swept him away. Soon after this
the enemy went up the river and pursued the boat which had the
submarine vessel on board and sunk it with their shot. Though I
afterwards recovered the vessel, I found it impossible at that
time to prosecute the design any farther.

The operator to whom Bushnell had entrusted his submarine boat was a
typical Yankee, Ezra Lee of Lyme, Connecticut. His story of the
adventure differs but little from that of Bushnell, but it is told
with a calm indifference to danger and a seeming lack of any notion
of the extraordinary in what he had done that gives an idea of the
man. "When I rode under the stern of the ship [the _Eagle_] I could
see the men on deck and hear them talk," he wrote. "I then shut down
all the doors, sunk down, and came up under the bottom of the ship."

This means that he hermetically sealed himself inside of a craft,
shaped like two upper turtle shells joined together--hence the name
of the _Turtle_. He had entered through the orifice at the top,
whence the head of the turtle usually protrudes. This before sinking
he had covered and made water-tight by screwing down upon it a brass
crown or top like that to a flask. Within he had enough air to
support him thirty minutes. The vessel stood upright, not flat as a
turtle carries himself. It was maintained in this position by lead
ballast. Within the operator occupied an upright position, half
sitting, half standing. To sink water was admitted, which gathered
in the lower part of the boat, while to rise again this was
expelled by a force pump. There were ventilators and portholes for
the admission of light and air when operating on the surface, but
once the cap was screwed down the operator was in darkness.

In this craft, which suggests more than anything else a curiously
shaped submarine coffin, Lee drifted along by the side of the ship,
navigating with difficulty with his single oar and seeking vainly to
find some spot to which he might affix his magazine. A fact which
might have disquieted a more nervous man was that the clockwork of
this machine was running and had been set to go off in an hour from
the ti