t, while the remaining four retained their original position,
and poured a well-directed and concentrated fire on the fort. It was
apparently the intention of the rebel commander to reduce and take
possession of the fort, if he could, before the Chinese troops should be
enabled to effect a landing, so that he might have some shelter behind
which to hold out until he could summon more rebel troops to his aid.

But the commandant of the garrison had evidently no intention of letting
the fort slip through his fingers, now that assistance was so close at
hand; and from what Frobisher had already seen of him, he felt sure that
his visitor of yesterday was the exact type of man who would blow the
building into the air, with himself and all that it contained, rather
than surrender, even to an overwhelming force. The guns from the
battlements crashed out anew, and although their fire was not nearly so
accurate as that from the rebel pieces, yet, in the long run, weight of
metal was bound to tell; and, while the shot was solid and had not
therefore the devastating effect of the percussion shell fired from the
war-ships, it began to be apparent that some of them at least were
getting home, and that their effect was already becoming very galling to
the rebels. The latter, now harassed almost beyond endurance by the
combined fire of the fort and the ships, brought up, about midday, a
company of sharpshooters armed with the latest breech-loaders, which
they had somehow managed to secure; and by means of well-directed
volleys, contrived to keep the men of the fort from their guns to such
an extent that the fire from that building dwindled almost to nothing,
so that one more of the rebel guns was released to be trained on the
anchored cruisers, when the effect of the increased cannonade soon
became apparent in that direction also.

Now and again Frobisher saw flashes of fire leap up on board the
men-of-war, for it appeared that the rebels were also possessed of a few
percussion shells; and he further observed that the ten-inch gun in the
bow turret of the foremost cruiser had been put out of action entirely,
thus giving a good deal of relief to the men who had been exposed to its
fire. The weapon had been struck full upon the muzzle at the precise
moment when a shell was leaving it, and the combined explosion had torn
a length of about four feet off the end of the gun, and had lifted it
clean out of its bearings, so that it now po