ended
for governing the motions of the ship, Farragut had taken his position
in the port main-rigging. Here he had near him Captain Jouett, standing
on the wheel-house of the Metacomet, and also the pilot, who, as at
Port Hudson, had been stationed aloft, on this occasion in the maintop,
so as to see well over the smoke. As this increased and rose higher,
Farragut went up step by step until he was close under the maintop.
Here, without losing touch with Jouett, he was very near the pilot, had
the whole scene of battle spread out under his eyes, and at the same
time, by bracing himself against the futtock shrouds, was able to use
his spy-glass more freely. Captain Drayton, however, being alarmed lest
he might be thrown to the deck, directed a seaman to carry a lashing
aloft and secure him to the rigging, which the admiral, after a moment's
remonstrance, permitted. By such a simple and natural train of causes
was Farragut brought to and secured in a position which he, like any
other commander-in-chief, had sought merely in order better to see the
operations he had to direct; but popular fancy was caught by the
circumstance, and to his amusement he found that an admiral lashed to
the rigging was invested with a significance equivalent to that of
colors nailed to the mast. "The illustrated papers are very amusing," he
wrote home. "Leslie has me lashed up to the mast like a culprit, and
says, 'It is the way officers will hereafter go into battle, etc.' You
understand, I was only standing in the rigging with a rope, that dear
boy Watson had brought me up," (this was later in the action, when the
admiral had shifted his position), "saying that if I would stand there I
had better secure myself against falling; and I thanked him for his
consideration, and took a turn around and over the shrouds and around my
body for fear of being wounded, as shots were flying rather thickly."

Shortly after the monitors and the bow guns of the fleet began firing,
the enemy's gunboats and the Tennessee moved out from behind Morgan and
took their position enfilading the channel. Twenty minutes later,
through the advance of the column, the broadsides of the leading ships
began to bear upon the fort; and as these heavy batteries vomited their
iron rain the fire of the defense visibly slackened. Amid the scene of
uproar and slaughter, in which the petty Confederate flotilla, thanks to
its position of vantage, was playing a deadly part quite out of
p