he
person possessing the chart wherein the masked battery's place was set
down is said to have destroyed it and fled. Let us hope, however, that
this is an error.

[Footnote A: The Milwaukee was sunk nearly due east of the city: the
Osage, Tecumseh, several despatch-boats and steamers, besides the
three monitors, were sunk by torpedoes in the bay.]

Keep in mind, in reading this account, the contrasted picture of peace
in Nature and war in man--the calm blue sky; the soft hazy outlines
of woods and bay-shore dropping their soft veils in the water; the
cottages, suggesting industry and love; the distant city; the delicate
and graceful spars of the Hartford; the busy despatch-steamers plying
to and fro; the bursting forts and huge ugly monitors; the starry
arches of flying shells by night and flying cloud by day; the soft lap
of the water; the sensuous, sweet beauty of that latitude of eternal
spring; and the soft dark violet of the outer sea, glassing itself in
calm or broken into millioned frets of blue, red and starry fire; the
danger above and the danger below; the dark mysterious caverns of the
sea, rich with coral grots and grove and abounding marine life; the
impenetrable gloom of the ship's hold, whose unimaginable darkness and
labyrinthine intricacy of machinery set obstacles at every turn and
move and step; the darkness; the fury; the hues and shape, all that
art can make or Nature fashion, gild or color wrought into one grand
tablature of splendor and magnificence. War and peaceful industry met
there in novel rivalry, and each claimed its privileges. The captain
of the Search said to the officers, while crowding his men behind the
turret, with sly, dry humor, "Come, you are all _paid_ to be shot at:
my men are not."

More than once the accuracy of the enemy's fire drove the little party
to shelter. Though the diver was shielded by the impenetrable fickle
element that gave Achilles invulnerability, the air-pump above was
exposed, and thus the diver might be slain by indirection. There
lay Achilles' heel, the exposed vulnerable part that Mother Thetis's
baptism neglected.

The work below was arduous: the hulk crowded with the entangling
machinery of sixteen engines, cuddies, ports, spars, levers, hatches,
stancheons, floating trunks, bibulous boxes heavy with drink, and the
awful, mysterious gloom of the water, which is not night or darkness,
but the absence of any ray to touch the sensitive optic nerve. The