CHAPTER XIV
THE IRON-CLADS
Miss Lucy Cary, knitting in hand, stood beside the hearth and surveyedthe large Greenwood parlour. "The lining of the window curtains," shesaid, "is good, stout, small figured chintz. My mother got it fromEngland. Four windows--four yards to a side--say thirty-two yards.That's enough for a dozen good shirts. The damask itself?--I don't knowwhat use they could make of it, but they can surely do something. Thenet curtains will do to stretch over hospital beds. Call one of theboys, Julius, and have them all taken down.--Well, what is it?"
"Miss Lucy, chile, when you done sont de curtains ter Richmon', how isyou gwine surmantle de windows?"
"We will leave them bare, Julius. All the more sunlight."
Unity came in, knitting. "Aunt Lucy, the velvet piano cover could go."
"That's a good idea, dear. A capital blanket!"
"A soldier won't mind the embroidery. What is it, Julius?"
"Miss Unity, when you done sont dat kiver ter Richmon', what you gwineinvestigate dat piano wif?"
"Why, we'll leave it bare, Julius! The grain of the wood shows betterso."
"The bishop," said Miss Lucy thoughtfully--"the bishop sent his studycarpet last week. What do you think, Unity?"
Unity, her head to one side, studied the carpet. "Do you reckon theywould really sleep under those roses and tulips, Aunt Lucy? Just imagineEdward!--But if you think it would do any good--"
"We might wait awhile, seeing that spring is here. If the war shouldlast until next winter, of course we shall send it."
Unity laughed. "Julius looks ten years younger! Why, Uncle Julius, wehave bare floors in summer, anyhow!"
"Yaas, Miss Unity," said Julius solemnly. "An' on de hottes' day ob Julyyou hab in de back ob yo' haid dat de cyarpets is superimposin' in degarret, in de cedar closet, ready fer de fust day ob November. How yougwine feel when you see November on de road, an' de cedar closet bar ezer bone? Hit ain' right ter take de Greenwood cyarpets an' curtains, an'my tablecloths an' de blankets an' sheets an' Ole Miss's fringedcounterpanes--no'm, hit ain't right eben if de ginerals do sequesteratesupplies! How de house gwine look when marster come home?"
Molly entered with her knitting. "The forsythia is in bloom! Aunt Lucy,please show me how to turn this heel. Car'line says you told her not tomake sugar cakes for Sunday?"
"Yes, dear, I did. I am sorry, for I know that you like them. Buteverything is so hard to get--and the armies--and the poor people. I'vetold Car'line to give us no more desserts."
"Oh!" cried Molly. "I wasn't complaining! It was Car'line who wasfussing. I'd give the army every loaf of sugar, and all the flour. Isthat the way you turn it?
Knit--knit--knit-- The soldiers' feet to fit!"
She curled herself up on the long sofa, and her needles went click,click! Unity lifted the music from the piano lid, drew off the velvetcover, and began to fold it. Muttering and shaking his head, Julius leftthe room. Miss Lucy went over and stood before the portrait of hermother. "Unity," she said, "would you send the great coffee urn toRichmond for the Gunboat Fair, or would you send lace?"
Unity pondered the question. "The lace would be easier to send, butmaybe they would rather have the silver. I don't see who is to buy atthe Fair--every one is _giving_. Oh, I wish we had a thousand gunboatsand a hundred _Virginias_--"
A door banged in the distance and the windows of the parlour rattled.The room grew darker. "I knew we should have a storm!" said Miss Lucy."If it lightens, put by your needles."
Judith came in suddenly. "There's going to be a great storm! The wind isblowing the elms almost to the ground! There are black clouds in theeast. I hope that there are clouds over the ocean, and over Chesapeake,and over Hampton Roads--except where the Merrimac lies! I hope thatthere it is still and sunny. Clouds, and a wind like a hurricane, a windthat will make high waves and drive the ships--and drive the Monitor!There will be a great storm. If the elms break, masts would break, too!Oh, if this night the Federal fleet would only go to the bottom of thesea!"
She crossed the room, opened the French window, and stood, a hand oneither side of the window frame, facing the darkened sky and thewind-tossed oaks. Behind her, in the large old parlour, there was aninstant's silence. Molly broke it with a shocked cry, "Judith JacquelineCary!"
Judith did not answer. She stood with her hair lifted by the wind, herhands wide, touching the window sides, her dark eyes upon the bendingoaks. In the room behind her Miss Lucy spoke. "It is they or us, Molly!They or all we love. The sooner they suffer the sooner they will let usalone. They have shut up all our ports. God forgive me, but I am blithewhen I hear of their ships gone down at sea!"
"Yes," said Judith, without turning. "Not stranded as they were beforeRoanoke Island, but wrecked and sunken. Come, look, Unity, at the wildstorm!"
Unity came and stood beside her. The oaks outside, like the elms at theback of the house, were moving in the blast. Over them hurried theclouds, black, large, and low. Down the driveway the yellow forsythias,the red pyrus japonicas showed in blurs of colours. The lightningflashed, and a long roll of thunder jarred the room. "You were thedreamer," said Unity, "and you had most of the milk of human kindness,and now you have been caught up beyond us all!"
Her sister looked at her, but with a distant gaze. "It is because I candream--no, not dream, see! I follow all the time--I follow with my mindthe troops upon the march, and the ships on the sea. I do not hate theships--they are beautiful, with the green waves about them and thesea-gulls with shining wings. And yet I wish that they would sink--down,down quickly, before there was much suffering, before the men on themhad time for thought. They should go like a stone to the bottom, withoutsuffering, and they should lie there, peacefully, until their spiritsare called again. And our ports should be open, and less blood would beshed. Less blood, less anger, less wretchedness, less pain, lessshedding of tears, less watching, watching, watching--"
"Look!" cried Unity. "The great oak bough is going!"
A vast spreading bough, large itself as a tree, snapped by the wind fromthe trunk, came crashing down and out upon the lawn. The thunder rolledagain, and large raindrops began to splash on the gravel paths.
"Some one is coming up the drive," exclaimed Unity. "It's a soldier!He's singing!"
The wind, blowing toward the house, brought the air and the quality ofthe voice that sang it.
"Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre, Qu'allez-vous faire Si loin d'ici? Voyez-vous pas que la nuit est profonde, Et que le monde N'est que souci?"
"Edward!" cried Judith. "It is Edward!"
The Greenwood ladies ran out on the front porch. Around the houseappeared the dogs, then, in the storm, two or three turbaned negresses.Mammy, coifed and kerchiefed, came down the stairs and through thehouse. "O my Lawd! Hit's my baby! O glory be! Singin' jes' lak he ustersing, layin' in my lap--mammy singin' ter him, an' he singin' ter mammy!O Marse Jesus! let me look at him--"
"Beau chevalier qui partez pour la guerre, Qu'allez-vous faire Si loin de nous?--"
Judith ran down the steps and over the grass, through the storm. Beyondthe nearer trees, by the great pyrus japonica bush, flame-red, she met aragged spectre, an Orpheus afoot and travel-stained, a demigod showingsigns of service in the trenches, Edward Cary, in short, beautifulstill, but gaunt as any wolf. The two embraced; they had always beencomrades. "Edward, Edward--"
"Eleven months," said Edward. "Judith, Judith, if you knew how good homelooks--"
"How thin you are, and brown! And walking!--Where is Prince John--andJeames?"
"Didn't I tell you in my last letter? Prince John was killed in a fightwe had on the Warwick River.... Jeames is in Richmond down with fever.He cried to come, but the doctor said he mustn't. I've only three daysmyself. Furloughs are hard to get, but just now the government will doanything for an
ybody who was on the Merrimac--You're worn yourself,Judith, and your eyes are so big and dark!--Is it Maury Stafford orRichard Cleave?"
Amid the leaping of the dogs they reached the gravelled space before thehouse. Miss Lucy folded her nephew in her arms. "God bless you,Edward--" She held him off and looked at him. "I never saw itbefore--but you're like your grandfather, my dear; you're like my dearfather!--O child, how thin you are!"
Unity and Molly hung upon him. "The papers told us that you were on theMerrimac--though we don't know how you got there! Did you come fromRichmond? Have you seen father?"
"Yes, for a few moments. He has come up from the south with General Lee.General Lee is to be commander of all the forces of the Confederacy.Father is well. He sent his dear love to you all. I saw Fauquier, too--"
Mammy met him at the top of the steps. "Oh, my lamb! O glory hallelujah!What you doin' wid dem worn-out close? An' yo' sh'ut tohn dat-er-way?What dey been doin' ter you--dat's what I wants ter know? My po'lamb!--Marse Edward, don' you laugh kaze mammy done fergit you ain' erbaby still--"
Edward hugged her. "One night in the trenches, not long ago, I swear Iheard you singing, mammy! I couldn't sleep. And at last I said, 'I'llput my head in mammy's lap, and she'll sing me
The Buzzards and the Butterflies--
and I'll go to sleep.' I did it, and I went off like a baby--Well,Julius, and how are you?"
Within the parlour there were explanations, ejaculations, questions, andanswers. "So short a furlough--when we have not seen you for almost ayear! Never mind--of course, you must get back. We'll have a littleparty for you to-morrow night. Oh, how brown you are, and your uniform'sso ragged! Never mind--we've got a bolt of Confederate cloth and JohnnyBates shall come out to-morrow.... All well. Knitting and watching,watching and knitting. The house has been full of refugees--Fairfaxesand Fauntleroys. They've gone on to Richmond, and we're alone just now.We take turn about at the hospitals in Charlottesville--there are threehundred sick--and we look after the servants and the place and the poorfamilies whose men are gone, and we read the papers over and over, everyword--and we learn letters off by heart, and we make lint, and we twistand turn and manage, and we knit and knit and wait and wait--Here'sJulius with the wine! And your room's ready--fire and hot water, andyoung Cato to take Jeames's place. Car'line is making sugar cakes, andwe shall have coffee for supper.... Hurry down, Edward, Edward_darling_!"
Edward darling came down clean, faintly perfumed, shaven, thin,extremely handsome and debonair. Supper went off beautifully, with thelast of the coffee poured from the urn that had not yet gone to theGunboat Fair, with the Greenwood ladies dressed in the best of theirlast year's gowns, with flowers in Judith's hair and at Unity's throat,with a reckless use of candles, with Julius and Tom, the dining-roomboy, duskily smiling in the background, with the spring rain beatingagainst the panes, with the light-wood burning on the hearth, withChurchill and Cary and Dandridge portraits, now in shadow, now in gleamupon the walls--with all the cheer, the light, the gracious warmth ofHome. None of the women spoke of how seldom they burned candles now, ofhow the coffee had been saved against an emergency, and of the luxurywhite bread was becoming. They ignored, too, the troubles of theplantation. They would not trouble their soldier with the growingdifficulty of finding food for the servants and for the stock, of theplough horses gone, and no seed for the sowing, of the problem it was toclothe the men, women, and children, with osnaburgh at thirty-eightcents a yard, with the difficulties of healing the sick, medicine havingbeen declared contraband of war and the home supply failing. They wouldnot trouble him with the makeshifts of women, their forebodings as toshoes, as to letter paper, their windings here and there through a mazeof difficulties strange to them as a landscape of the moon. They wouldlearn, and it was but little harder than being in the field. Not thatthey thought of it in that light; they thought the field as much harderas it was more glorious. Nothing was too good for their soldier; theywould have starved a week to have given him the white bread, the loafsugar, and the Mocha.
Supper over, he went down to the house quarter to speak to the men andwomen there; then, in the parlour, at the piano, he played with hismasterly touch "The Last Waltz," and then he came to the fire, took hisgrandfather's chair, and described to the women the battle at sea.
"We were encamped on the Warwick River--infantry, and a cavalry company,and a battalion from New Orleans. Around us were green flats, black mud,winding creeks, waterfowl, earthworks, and what guns they could give us.At the mouth of the river, across the channel, we had sunk twenty canalboats, to the end that Burnside should not get by. Besides the canalboats and the guns and the waterfowl there was a deal offever--malarial--of exposure, of wet, of mouldy bread, of homesicknessand general desolation. Some courage existed, too, and singing at times.We had been down there a long time among the marshes--all winter, infact. About two weeks ago--"
"Oh, Edward, were you very homesick?"
"Devilish. For the certain production of a very curious feeling, give mepicket duty on a wet marsh underneath the stars! Poeticplaces--marshes--with a strong suggestion about them of The Last Man....Where was I? Down to our camp one morning about two weeks ago came ElCapitan Colorado--General Magruder, you know--gold lace, stars, andblack plume! With him came Lieutenant Wood, C. S. N. We were paraded--"
"Edward, try as I may, I cannot get over the strangeness of your beingin the ranks!"
Edward laughed. "There's many a better man than I in them, Aunt Lucy!They make the best of crows'-nests from which to spy on life, and thatis what I always wanted to do--to spy on life!--The men were paraded,and Lieutenant Wood made us a speech. 'The old Merrimac, you know, men,that was burnt last year when the Yankees left Norfolk?--well, we'veraised her, and cut her down to her berth deck, and made of her what wecall an iron-clad. An iron-clad is a new man-of-war that's going to takethe place of the old. The Merrimac is not a frigate any longer; she'sthe iron-clad Virginia, and we rather think she's going to make her nameremembered. She's over there at the Gosport Navy Yard, and she's almostready. She's covered over with iron plates, and she's got an iron beak,or ram, and she carries ten guns. On the whole, she's the ugliest beautythat you ever saw! She's almost ready to send to Davy Jones's locker aYankee ship or two. Commodore Buchanan commands her, and you know who heis! She's got her full quota of officers, and, the speaker excepted,they're as fine a set as you'll find on the high seas! But man-of-war'smen are scarcer, my friends, than hen's teeth! It's what comes of havingno maritime population. Every man Jack that isn't on our few littleships is in the army--and the Virginia wants a crew of three hundred ofthe bravest of the brave! Now, I am talking to Virginians andLouisianians. Many of you are from New Orleans, and that means that someof you may very well have been seamen--seamen at an emergency, anyhow!Anyhow, when it comes to an emergency Virginians and Louisianians arethere to meet it--on sea or on land! Just now there is an emergency--theVirginia's got to have a crew. General Magruder, for all he's got only asmall force with which to hold a long line--General Magruder, like thepatriot that he is, has said that I may ask this morning for volunteers.Men! any seaman among you has the chance to gather laurels from thestrangest deck of the strangest ship that ever you saw! No fear for thelaurels! They're fresh and green even under our belching smokestack. TheMerrimac is up like the phoenix; and the last state of her is greaterthan the first, and her name is going down in history! Louisianians andVirginians, who volunteers?'
"About two hundred volunteered--"
"Edward, what did you know about seamanship?"
"Precious little. Chiefly, Unity, what you have read to me from novels.But the laurels sounded enticing, and I was curious about the ship.Well, Wood chose about eighty--all who had been seamen or gunners and abaker's dozen of ignoramuses beside. I came in with that portion of theelect. And off we went, in boats, across the James to the southern shoreand to the Gosport Navy Yard. That was a week before the battle."
"What does it look like, Edward--the Me
rrimac?"
"It looks, Judith, like Hamlet's cloud. Sometimes there is an appearanceof a barn with everything but the roof submerged--or of Noah's Ark,three fourths under water! Sometimes, when the flag is flying, she hasthe air of a piece of earthworks, mysteriously floated off into theriver. Ordinarily, though, she is rather like a turtle, with a chimneysticking up from her shell. The shell is made of pitch pine and oak, andit is covered with two-inch thick plates of Tredegar iron. The beak isof cast iron, standing four feet out from the bow; that, with the restof the old berth deck, is just awash. Both ends of the shell are roundedfor pivot guns. Over the gun deck is an iron grating on which you canwalk at need. There is the pilot-house covered with iron, and there isthe smokestack. Below are the engines and boilers, condemned after theMerrimac's last cruise, and, since then, lying in the ooze at the bottomof the river. They are very wheezy, trembling, poor old men of the sea!It was hard work to get the coal for them to eat; it was brought at lastfrom away out in Montgomery County, from the Price coal-fields. The gunsare two 7-inch rifles, two 6-inch rifles, and six 9-inch smoothbores;ten in all.--Yes, call her a turtle, plated with iron; she looks as muchlike that as like anything else.
"When we eighty men from the Warwick first saw her, she was swarmingwith workmen. They continued to cover her over, and to make impossibleany drill or exercise upon her. Hammer, hammer upon belated plates fromthe Tredegar! Tinker, tinker with the poor old engines! Make shift hereand make shift there; work through the day and work through the night,for there was a rumour abroad that the Ericsson, that we knew wasbuilding, was coming down the coast! There was no chance to drill, tobecome acquainted with the turtle and her temperament. Her species hadnever gone to war before, and when you looked at her there was room fordoubt as to how she would behave! Officers and men were strange to oneanother--and the gunners could not try the guns for the swarmingworkmen. There wasn't so much of the Montgomery coal that it could bewasted on experiments in firing up--and, indeed, it seemed wise not toexperiment at all with the ancient engines! So we stood about the navyyard, and looked down the Elizabeth and across the flats to HamptonRoads, where we could see the Cumberland, the Congress, and theMinnesota, Federal ships lying off Newport News--and the workmenrivetted the last plates--and smoke began to come out of thesmokestack--and suddenly Commodore Buchanan, with his lieutenants behindhim, appeared between us and the Merrimac--or the Virginia. Most of usstill call her the Merrimac. It was the morning of the eighth. The sunshone brightly and the water was very blue--blue and still. There weresea-gulls, I remember, flying overhead, screaming as they flew--and themarshes were growing emerald--"
"Yes, yes! What did Commodore Buchanan want?"
"Don't be impatient, Molly! You women don't in the least look likeGriseldas! Aunt Lucy has the air of her pioneer great-grandmother whohas heard an Indian calling! And as for Judith--Judith!"
"Yes, Edward."
"Come back to Greenwood. You looked a listening Jeanne d'Arc. What didyou hear?"
"I heard the engines working, and the sea fowl screaming, and the windin the rigging of the Cumberland. Go on, Edward."
"We soldiers turned seamen came to attention. 'Get on board, men,' saidCommodore Buchanan. 'We are going out in the Roads and introduce a newera.' So off the workmen came and on we went--the flag officers and thelieutenants and the midshipmen and the surgeons and the volunteer aidesand the men. The engineers were already below and the gunners werelooking at the guns. The smoke rolled up very black, the ropes were castoff, a bugle blew, out streamed the stars and bars, all the workmen onthe dock swung their hats, and down the Elizabeth moved the Merrimac.She moved slowly enough with her poor old engines, and she steeredbadly, and she drew twenty-two feet, and she was ugly, ugly, ugly,--poorthing!
"Now we were opposite Craney Island, at the mouth of the Elizabeth.There's a battery there, you know, part of General Colston's line, andthere are forts upon the main along the James. All these were nowcrowded with men, hurrahing, waving their caps.... As we passed Craneythey were singing 'Dixie.' So we came out into the James to HamptonRoads.
"Now all the southern shore from Willoughby's Spit to Ragged Island isas grey as a dove, and all the northern shore from Old Point Comfort toNewport News is blue where the enemy has settled. In between are theshining Roads. Between the Rip Raps and Old Point swung at anchor theRoanoke, the Saint Lawrence, a number of gunboats, store ships, andtransports, and also a French man-of-war. Far and near over the Roadswere many small craft. The Minnesota, a large ship, lay halfway betweenOld Point and Newport News. At the latter place there is a large Federalgarrison, and almost in the shadow of its batteries rode at anchor thefrigate Congress and the sloop Cumberland. The first had fifty guns, thesecond thirty. The Virginia, or the Merrimac, or the turtle, creepingout from the Elizabeth, crept slowly and puffing black smoke into theSouth Channel. The pilot, in his iron-clad pilot-house no bigger than ahickory nut, put her head to the northwest. The turtle began to swimtoward Newport News.
"Until now not a few of us within her shell, and almost all of thesoldiers and the forts along the shore, had thought her upon a trialtrip only,--down the Elizabeth, past Craney Island, turn at Sewell'sPoint, and back to the dock of the Gosport Navy Yard! When she did notturn, the cheering on the shore stopped; you felt the breathlessness.When she passed the point and took to the South Channel, when her headturned upstream, when she came abreast of the Middle Ground, when theysaw that the turtle was going to fight, from along the shore to Craneyand from Sewell's Point there arose a yell. Every man in grey yelled.They swung hat or cap; they shouted themselves hoarse. All the flagsstreamed suddenly out, trumpets blared, the sky lifted, and we drank thesunshine in like wine; that is, some of us did. To others it came coldlike hemlock against the lip. Fear is a horrible sensation. I wasdreadfully afraid--"
"Edward!"
"Dreadfully. But you see I didn't tell any one I was afraid, and thatmakes all the difference! Besides, it wore off.... It was a spring dayand high tide, and the Federal works at Newport News and the Congressand the Cumberland and the more distant Minnesota all looked asleep inthe calm, sweet weather. Washing day it was on the Congress, and clotheswere drying in the rigging. That aspect as of painted ships, paintedbreastworks, a painted sea-piece, lasted until the turtle reachedmid-channel. Then the other side woke up. Upon the shore appeared a blueswarm--men running to and fro. Bugles signalled. A commotion, too, aroseupon the Congress and the Cumberland. Her head toward the latter ship,the turtle puffed forth black smoke and wallowed across the channel. Anuglier poor thing you never saw, nor a bolder! Squat to the water,belching black smoke, her engines wheezing and repining, unwieldy ofmanagement, her bottom scraping every hummock of sand in all the shoalyRoads--ah, she was ugly and courageous! Our two small gunboats, theRaleigh and the Beaufort, coming from Norfolk, now overtook us,--we wenton together. I was forward with the crew of the 7-inch pivot gun. Icould see through the port, above the muzzle. Officers and men, we wereall cooped under the turtle's shell; in order by the open ports, and theguns all ready.... We came to within a mile of the Cumberland, tall andgraceful with her masts and spars and all the blue sky above. She lookeda swan, and we, the Ugly Duckling.... Our ram, you know, was underwater--seventy feet of the old berth deck, ending in a four-foot beak ofcast iron.... We came nearer. At three quarters of a mile, we openedwith the bow gun. The Cumberland answered, and the Congress, and theirgunboats and shore batteries. Then began a frightful uproar that shookthe marshes and sent the sea birds screaming. Smoke arose, and flashingfire, and an excitement--an excitement--an excitement.--Then it was,ladies, that I forgot to be afraid. The turtle swam on, toward theCumberland, swimming as fast as Montgomery coal and the engines that hadlain at the bottom of the sea could make her go. There was a frightfulnoise within her shell, a humming, a shaking. The Congress, the gunboatsand the shore batteries kept firing broadsides. There was an enormous,thundering noise, and the air was grown sulphurous cloud. Their shotcame pattering like hail, and like hail i
t rebounded from the iron-clad.We passed the Congress--very close to her tall side. She gave us awithering fire. We returned it, and steered on for the Cumberland. Aword ran from end to end of the turtle's shell, 'We are going to ramher--stand by, men!'
"Within easy range we fired the pivot gun. I was of her crew; half nakedwe were, powder-blackened and streaming with sweat. The shell she sentburst above the Cumberland's stern pivot, killing or wounding most ofher crew that served it.... We went on.... Through the port I could nowsee the Cumberland plainly, her starboard side just ahead of us, men inthe shrouds and running to and fro on her deck. When we were all but onher, her starboard blazed. That broadside tore up the carriage of ourpivot gun, cut another off at the trunnions, and the muzzle from athird, riddled the smokestack and steam-pipe, carried away an anchor,and killed or wounded nineteen men. The Virginia answered with threeguns; a cloud of smoke came between the iron-clad and the armed sloop;it lifted--and we were on her. We struck her under the fore rigging witha dull and grinding sound. The iron beak with which we were armed waswrested off.
"The Virginia shivered, hung a moment, then backed clear of theCumberland, in whose side there was now a ragged and a gaping hole. Thepilot in the iron-clad pilot-house turned her head upstream. The waterwas shoal; she had to run up the James some way before she could turnand come back to attack the Congress. Her keel was in the mud; she wascreeping now like a land turtle, and all the iron shore was firing ather.... She turned at last in freer water and came down the Roads.Through the port we could see the Cumberland that we had rammed. Shehad listed to port and was sinking. The water had reached her main deck;all her men were now on the spar deck, where they yet served the pivotguns. She fought to the last. A man of ours, stepping for one momentthrough a port to the outside of the turtle's shell, was cut in two. Asthe water rose and rose, the sound of her guns was like a lesseningthunder. One by one they stopped.... To the last she flew her colours.The Cumberland went down.
"By now there had joined us the small, small James River squadron thathad been anchored far up the river. The Patrick Henry had twelve guns,the Jamestown had two, and the Teaser one. Down they scurried like threevaliant marsh hens to aid the turtle. With the Beaufort and the Raleighthere were five valiant pygmies, and they fired at the shore batteries,and the shore batteries answered like an angry Jove with solid shot,with shell, with grape, and with canister! A shot wrecked the boiler ofthe Patrick Henry, scalding to death the men who were near.... Theturtle sank a transport steamer lying alongside the wharf at NewportNews, and then she rounded the point and bore down upon the Congress.
"The frigate had showed discretion, which is the better part of valour.Noting how deeply we drew, she had slipped her cables and run aground inthe shallows where she was safe from the ram of the Merrimac. We couldget no nearer than two hundred feet. There we took up position, andthere we began to rake her, the Beaufort, the Raleigh, and the Jamestowngiving us what aid they might. She had fifty guns, and there were theheavy shore batteries, and below her the Minnesota. This ship, alsoaground in the Middle Channel, now came into action with a roar. Ahundred guns were trained upon the Merrimac. The iron hail beat downevery point, not iron-clad, that showed above our shell. The muzzle oftwo guns were shot away, the stanchions, the boat davits, the flagstaff.Again and again the flagstaff fell, and again and again we replaced it.At last we tied the colours to the smokestack. Beside the nineteen poorfellows that the Cumberland's guns had mowed down, we now had otherkilled and wounded. Commodore Buchanan was badly hurt, and the flaglieutenant, Minor. The hundred guns thundered against the Merrimac, andthe Merrimac thundered against the Congress. The tall frigate and herfifty guns wished herself an iron-clad; the swan would have blithelychanged with the ugly duckling. We brought down her mainmast, wedisabled her guns, we strewed her decks with blood and anguish (war is awild beast, nothing more, and I'll hail the day when it lies slain). Wesmashed in her sides and we set her afire. She hauled down her coloursand ran up a white flag. The Merrimac ceased firing and signalled to theBeaufort. The Beaufort ran alongside, and the frigate's ranking officergave up his colours and his sword. The Beaufort's and the Congress's ownboats removed the crew and the wounded.... The shore batteries, theMinnesota, the picket boat Zouave, kept up a heavy firing all the whileupon the Merrimac, upon the Raleigh and the Jamestown, and also upon theBeaufort. We waited until the crew was clear of the Congress, and thenwe gave her a round of hot shot that presently set her afire from stemto stern. This done, we turned to other work.
"The Minnesota lay aground in the North Channel. To her aid hurrying upfrom Old Point came the Roanoke and the Saint Lawrence. Our ownbatteries at Sewell's Point opened upon these two ships as they passed,and they answered with broadsides. We fed our engines, and under abillow of black smoke ran down to the Minnesota. Like the Congress, shelay upon a sand bar, beyond fear of ramming. We could only manoeuvrefor deep water, near enough to her to be deadly. It was now lateafternoon. I could see through the port of the bow pivot the slantsunlight upon the water, and how the blue of the sky was paling. TheMinnesota lay just ahead; very tall she looked, another of the Congressbreed; the old warships singing their death song. As we came on we firedthe bow gun, then, lying nearer her, began with broadsides. But we couldnot get near enough; she was lifted high upon the sand, the tide wasgoing out, and we drew twenty-three feet. We did her great harm, but wewere not disabling her. An hour passed and the sun drew on to setting.The Roanoke turned and went back under the guns of Old Point, but theSaint Lawrence remained to thunder at the turtle's iron shell. TheMerrimac was most unhandy, and on the ebb tide there would be shoalsenough between us and a berth for the night.... The Minnesota could notget away, at dawn she would be yet aground, and we would then take herfor our prize. 'Stay till dusk, and the blessed old iron box will groundherself where Noah's flood won't float her!' The pilot ruled, and in thegold and purple sunset we drew off. As we passed, the Minnesota blazedwith all her guns; we answered her, and answered, too, the SaintLawrence. The evening star was shining when we anchored off Sewell'sPoint. The wounded were taken ashore, for we had no place for woundedmen under the turtle's shell. Commodore Buchanan leaving us, LieutenantCatesby Ap Rice Jones took command.
"I do not remember what we had for supper. We had not eaten since earlymorning, so we must have had something. But we were too tired to thinkor to reason or to remember. We dropped beside our guns and slept, butnot for long. Three hours, perhaps, we slept, and then a whisper seemedto run through the Merrimac. It was as though the iron-clad herself hadspoken, 'Come! watch the Congress die!' Most of us arose from beside theguns and mounted to the iron grating above, to the top of the turtle'sshell. It was a night as soft as silk; the water smooth, in long, faint,olive swells; a half-moon in the sky. There were lights across at OldPoint, lights on the battery at the Rip Raps, lights in the frightenedshipping, huddled under the guns of Fortress Monroe, lights along eithershore. There were lanterns in the rigging of the Minnesota where she layupon the sand bar, and lanterns on the Saint Lawrence and the Roanoke.As we looked a small moving light, as low as possible to the water,appeared between the Saint Lawrence and the Minnesota. A man said,'What's that? Must be a rowboat.' Another answered, 'It's going too fastfor a rowboat--funny! right on the water like that!' 'A launch, Ireckon,' said a third, 'with plenty of rowers. Now it's behind theMinnesota.'--'Shut up, you talkers,' said a midshipman, 'I want to lookat the Congress!'
"Four miles away, off Newport News, lay the burning Congress. In thestill, clear night, she seemed almost at hand. All her masts, her spars,and her rigging showed black in the heart of a great ring of firelight.Her hull, lifted high by the sand bank which held her, had round redeyes. Her ports were windows lit from within. She made a vision ofbeauty and of horror. One by one, as they were reached by the flame, herguns exploded--a loud and awful sound in the night above the Roads. Westood and watched that sea picture, and we watched in silence. We areseeing giant things, and ere this war is ended we shall see more. At tw
oo'clock in the morning the fire reached her powder magazine. She blewup. A column like the Israelite's Pillar shot to the zenith; there camean earthquake sound, sullen and deep; when all cleared there was onlyher hull upborne by the sand and still burning. It burned until thedawn, when it smouldered and went out."
The narrator arose, walked the length of the parlour, and came back tothe four women. "Haven't you had enough for to-night? Unity lookssleepy, and Judith's knitting has lain this half-hour on the floor.Judith!"
Molly spoke. "Judith says that if there is fighting around Richmond sheis going there to the hospitals, to be a nurse. The doctors here saythat she does better than any one--"
"Go on, Edward," said Judith. "What happened at dawn?"
"We got the turtle in order, and those ancient mariners, our engines,began to work, wheezing and slow. We ran up a new flagstaff, and everyman stood to the guns, and the Merrimac moved from Sewell's Point, herhead turned to the Minnesota, away across, grounded on a sand bank inthe North Channel. The sky was as pink as the inside of a shell, and athin white mist hung over the marshes and the shore and the greatstretch of Hampton Roads. It was so thin that the masts of the shipshuddled below Fortress Monroe rose clear of it into the flush of thecoming sun. All their pennants were flying--the French man-of-war, andthe northern ships. At that hour the sea-gulls are abroad, searching fortheir food. They went past the ports, screaming and moving their silverwings.
"The Minnesota grew in size. Every man of us looked eagerly--from thepilot-house, from the bow ports, and as we drew parallel with her fromthe ports of the side. We fired the bow gun as we came on and the shottold. There was some cheering; the morning air was so fine and the prizeso sure! The turtle was in spirits--poor old turtle with her batteredshell and her flag put back as fast as it was torn away! Her engines,this morning, were mortal slow and weak; they wheezed and whined, andshe drew so deep that, in that shoaly water, she went aground twicebetween Sewell's Point and the stretch she had now reached of smoothpink water, with the sea-gulls dipping between her and the Minnesota.Despite the engines she was happy, and the gunners were all ready at thestarboard ports--"
Leaning over, he took the poker and stirred the fire.
"The best laid plans of mice and men Do aften gang agley--"
Miss Lucy's needles clicked. "Yes, the papers told us. The Ericsson."
"There came," said Edward, "there came from behind the Minnesota acheese-box on a shingle. It had lain there hidden by her bulk sincemidnight. It was its single light that we had watched and thought nomore of! A cheese-box on a shingle--and now it darted into the open asthough a boy's arm had sent it! It was little beside the Minnesota. Itwas little even beside the turtle. There was a silence when we saw it, asilence of astonishment. It had come so quietly upon the scene--a _deusex machina_, indeed, dropped from the clouds between us and our prey. Ina moment we knew it for the Ericsson--the looked-for other iron-clad weknew to be a-building. The Monitor, they call it.... The shingle wasjust awash; the cheese-box turned out to be a revolving turret,mail-clad and carrying two large, modern guns--11-inch. The whole thingwas armoured, had the best of engines, and drew only twelve feet....Well, the Merrimac had a startled breath, to be sure--there is nodenying the drama of the Monitor's appearance--and then she righted andbegan firing. She gave to the cheese-box, or to the armoured turret, oneafter the other, three broadsides. The turret blazed and answered, andthe balls rebounded from each armoured champion." He laughed. "ByHeaven! it was like our old favourites, Ivanhoe and De BoisGuilbert--the ugliest squat gnomes of an Ivanhoe and of a Brian de BoisGuilbert that ever came out of a nightmare! We thundered in the lists,and then we passed each other, turned, and again encountered. Sometimeswe were a long way apart, and sometimes there was not ten feet of waterbetween those sunken decks from which arose the iron shell of theMerrimac and the iron turret of the Monitor. She fired every sevenminutes; we as rapidly as we could load. Now it was the bow gun, now theafter pivot, now a full broadside. Once or twice we thought her donefor, but always her turret revolved, and her 11-inch guns opened again.In her lighter draught she had a great advantage; she could turn andwind where we could not. The Minnesota took a hand, and an iron batteryfrom the shore. We were striving to ram the Ericsson, but we could notget close to her; our iron beak, too, was sticking in the side of thesunken Cumberland--we could only ram with the blunt prow. The Minnesota,as we passed, gave us all her broadside guns--a tremendous fusillade atpoint-blank range, which would have sunk any ship of the swan breed. Theturtle shook off shot and shell, grape and canister, and answered withher bow gun. The shell which it threw entered the side of the frigate,and, bursting amidship, exploded a store of powder and set the ship onfire. Leaving disaster aboard the Minnesota, we turned and sunk thetugboat Dragon. Then came manoeuvre and manoeuvre to gain positionwhere we could ram the Monitor....
"We got it at last. The engines made an effort like the leap of thespirit before expiring. 'Go ahead! Full speed!' We went; we bore downupon the Monitor, now in deeper water. But at the moment that we sawvictory she turned. Our bow, lacking the iron beak, gave but a glancingstroke. It was heavy as it was; the Monitor shook like a man with theague, but she did not share the fate of the Cumberland. There was noragged hole in her side; her armour was good, and held. She backed,gathered herself together, then rushed forward, striving to ram us inher turn. But our armour, too, was good, and held. Then she came uponthe Merrimac's quarter, laid her bow against the shell, and fired her11-inch guns twice in succession. We were so close, each to the other,that it was as though two duelists were standing upon the same cloak.Frightful enough was the concussion of those guns.
"That charge drove in the Merrimac's iron side three inches or more. Theshots struck above the ports of the after guns, and every man at thoseguns was knocked down by the impact and bled at the nose and ears. TheMonitor dropped astern, and again we turned and tried to ram her. Buther far lighter draught put her where we could not go; our bow, too, wasnow twisted and splintered. Our powder was getting low. We did not spareit, we could not; we sent shot and shell continuously against theMonitor, and she answered in kind. Monitor and Merrimac, we went nowthis way, now that, the Ericsson much the lighter and quickest, theMerrimac fettered by her poor old engines, and her great length, and hertwenty-three feet draught. It was two o'clock in the afternoon.... Theduelists stepped from off the cloak, tried operations at a distance,hung for a moment in the wind of indecision, then put down the matchfrom the gunners' hands. The Monitor darted from us, her head toward theshoal water known as the Middle Ground. She reached it and restedtriumphant, out of all danger from our ram, and yet where she couldstill protect the Minnesota.... A curious silence fell upon the Roads;sullen like the hush before a thunderstorm, and yet not like that, forwe had had the thunderstorm. It was the stillness, perhaps, ofexhaustion. It was late afternoon, the fighting had been heavy. The airwas filled with smoke; in the water were floating spars and wreckage ofthe ships we had destroyed. The weather was sultry and still. The doggedbooming of a gun from a shore battery sounded lonely and remote as abell buoy. The tide was falling; there were sand-bars enough between usand Sewell's Point. We waited an hour. The Monitor was rightly contentwith the Middle Ground, and would not come back for all our charming. Wefired at intervals, upon her and upon the Minnesota, but at last ourpowder grew so low that we ceased. The tide continued to fall, and thepilot had much to say.... The red sun sank in the west; the engineersfed the ancient mariners with Montgomery coal; black smoke gushed forthand pilots felt their way into the South Channel, and slowly, slowlyback toward Sewell's Point. The day closed in a murky evening with ataste of smoke in the air. In the night-time the Monitor went down theRoads to Fortress Monroe, and in the morning we took the Merrimac intodry 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 theCumberland. Her boats were gone, and her smokestack as full of holes asany colander, and the e
ngines at the last gasp. Several of the guns wereinjured, and coal and powder and ammunition all lacked. We put herthere--the dear and ugly warship, the first of the iron-clads--we puther there in dry dock, and there she's apt to stay for some weeks tocome. Lieutenant Wood was sent to Richmond with the report for thepresident and the secretary of the navy. He carried, too, the flag ofthe Congress, and I was one of the men detailed for its charge.... Andnow 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-enguerre." Miss Lucy took up her knitting, and knitted very rapidly, hereyes now upon her nephew, now upon her father's portrait. Judith, risingfrom the old cross-stitch tabouret where she had been sitting, laid afresh log on the fire, then went and stood beside the long window,looking out upon the rainy night.
"What," asked Edward between two chords, "what do you hear from theValley?"
Unity answered: "General Banks has crossed the Potomac and enteredWinchester--poor, poor Winchester! General Jackson hasn't quite fivethousand men. He has withdrawn toward Woodstock. In spite of thatdreadful Romney march, General Johnston and the soldiers seem to haveconfidence in him--"
Molly came in with her soft little voice. "Major Stafford has beentransferred. He is with General Ewell on the Rappahannock. He writes toJudith every week. They are beautiful letters--they make you seeeverything that is done."
"What do you hear from Richard Cleave?"
"He never writes."
Judith came back from the window. "It is raining, raining! The petalsare falling from the pyrus japonica, and all the trees are bending!Edward, war is terrible, but it lifts you up...." She locked her handsbehind her head. "It lifts you up, out in the storm or listening to whatthe ships have done, or to the stories that are told! And then you lookat the unploughed land, and you wait for the bulletins, and you go tothe hospital down there, ... and you say, 'Never--oh, nevermore let ushave war!'"