d from the moorings, the barracks
were fired, the lurid light casting a fearful gleam upon the crowded
yards and shrouds of the towering frigate. A little way out in the
stream a rocket was sent up from the "Pawnee." This was the signal for
the firing of the trains. The scene that followed is thus described by
an eye-witness:--

"The rocket sped high in air, paused a second, and burst in showers of
many colored lights; and, as it did so, the well-set trains at the
ship-houses, and on the decks of the fated vessels left behind, went
off as if lit simultaneously by the rocket. One of the ship-houses
contained the old 'New York,' a ship thirty years on the stocks, and
yet unfinished; the other was vacant. But both houses, and the old
'New York,' burned like tinder. The vessels fired were the
'Pennsylvania,' the 'Merrimac,' the 'Germantown,' the 'Plymouth,' the
'Raritan,' the 'Columbia,' and the 'Dolphin.' The old 'Delaware' and
'Columbus," worn-out and disabled seventy-fours, were scuttled, and
sunk at the upper docks on Friday.

"I need not try to picture the scene of the grand conflagration that
now burst like the day of judgment on the startled citizens of
Norfolk, Portsmouth, and all the surrounding country. Any one who has
seen a ship burn, and knows how like a fiery serpent the flame leaps
from pitchy deck to smoking shrouds, and writhes to their very top
around the masts that stand like martyrs doomed, can form some idea of
the wonderful display that followed. It was not thirty minutes from
the time the trains were fired, till the conflagration roared like a
hurricane, and the flames from land and water swayed and met and
mingled together, and darted high, and fell, and leaped up again, and
by their very motion showed their sympathy with the crackling,
crashing war of destruction beneath.

[Illustration: Destruction of Norfolk Navy-yard.]

"But in all this magnificent scene the old ship 'Pennsylvania' was the
centre-piece. She was a very giant in death, as she had been in life.
She was a sea of flame; and when the iron had entered her soul, and
her bowels were consuming, then did she spout forth from every
porthole of every deck torrents and cataracts of fire, that to the
mind of Milton would have represented her a frigate of hell pouring
out unending broadsides of infernal fire. Several of her guns were
left loaded, but not shotted; and as the fire reached them they sent
out on the startled morning air minute-