issippi, in order to "show the flag in Texas"
and say "hands off!" to Mexico and France in the least effective
way of all.

During this delay the Confederate ram _Albemarle_ came down the
Roanoke River, hoping to break through the local blockade in Albemarle
Sound and so give North Carolina an outlet to the sea. Two attempts
against Newbern, which closed the way out to Pamlico Sound, had
failed; but now (the fifth of May) great hopes were set upon the
_Albemarle_. At first she seemed impregnable; and the Federal shot
and shell glanced harmlessly off her iron sides. But presently
Commander Roe of the _Sassacus_ (a light-draft, pair-paddle,
double-ender gunboat) getting at right angles to her, ordered his
engineer to stuff the fires with oiled waste and keep the throttle
open. "All hands, lie down!" shouted Roe, as the throbbing engines
drove his vessel to the charge. Then came an earthquake shock: the
_Sassacus_ crashed her bronze beak into the _Albemarle's_ side.
Both vessels were disabled; a shell from the _Albemarle_ burst the
boilers of the _Sassacus_, scalding the engineers. But the rest
fought off the attempt made by the Albemarles to board. Presently
the furious opponents drifted apart; and the _Albemarle_, unable
to face her other enemies, took refuge upstream. There, on the
twenty-seventh of October, she was heroically attacked and sunk by
Lieutenant W. B. Cushing, U. S. N., with a spar torpedo projecting
from a little steam launch. Cushing himself swam off through a
hail of bullets, worked his way through the woods, seized a skiff
belonging to one of the enemy's outposts, and reached the flagship
half dead but wholly triumphant.

Between the _Albemarle's_ two fights Farragut took Mobile after
a magnificent action on the fifth of August. There were batteries
ashore, torpedoes across the channel, the _Tennessee_ ram and other
Confederate vessels waiting on the flank: three kinds of danger to
the Union fleet if one false movement had been made. But Farragut's
touch was sure. He sent his ironclads through next to the batteries,
which were only really dangerous on one side. This protected the
wooden ships against the batteries and the ironclads against the
torpedoes; for the Confederates had to leave part of the fairway
clear in order to use it themselves. Through this narrow channel
the four strongly armored monitors led the desperate way, a little
ahead and to starboard of the wooden vessels, which followed i