the Brooklyn; the stern of the latter vessel, as
she backed, coming up into the wind so that her bows turned toward the
fort. Fortunately, the rear ships were some little distance off; but
Farragut, ignorant of the cause of the Brooklyn's action, saw his line
of battle doubling up and threatened with an almost inextricable
confusion, in the most difficult and exposed part of the passage, under
a cross-fire from the fort and the enemy's vessels. Immediately upon
this frightful perplexity succeeded the great disaster of the day.
Craven, pursuing his course across the suspected line of danger, had
reached within two hundred yards of the Tennessee, and the crews of both
vessels were waiting with tense nerves for the expected collision, when
a torpedo exploded under the Tecumseh, then distant a little over five
hundred yards from the Hartford. From his elevated post of observation
Farragut saw her reel violently from side to side, lurch heavily over,
and then go down head foremost, her screw revolving wildly in the air as
she disappeared.

It was the supreme moment of his life, in which the scales of his
fortunes wavered in the balance. All the long years of preparation, of
faithful devotion to obscure duty awaiting the opportunity that might
never come--all the success attending the two brief years in which his
flag had flown--all the glories of the river fights--on the one side;
and on the other, threatening to overbear and wreck all, a danger he
could not measure, but whose dire reality had been testified by the
catastrophe just befallen under his own eyes. Added to this was the
complication in the order of battle ahead of him, produced by the double
movements of the Brooklyn and Tecumseh, which no longer allowed him to
seize the one open path, follow his own first brave thought, and lead
his fleet in person through the narrow way where, if at all, safety lay.
The Brooklyn, when she began to back, was on the starboard bow of the
flag-ship, distant one or two hundred yards, and falling off to
starboard lay directly in the way athwart the channel. The second
monitor, Manhattan, of the same class as the Tecumseh, had passed
ahead; but the two light-draughts, the Winnebago and Chickasaw, were
drawing up abreast of the three ships thus massed together. As they
passed, the admiration of the officers of the flag-ship was stirred to
see Captain Stevens, of the Winnebago, pacing calmly from turret to
turret of his unwieldy vessel