alone was silent. After firing the first two shots, her commander,
Captain Craven, had loaded his two big guns with steel shot, and, thus
prepared, reserved himself for the Confederate ironclad, which he had
set his heart upon taking or destroying single-handed. The two columns
of monitors and the wooden ships lashed in pairs were now approaching
the narrowest part of the channel, where the torpedoes lay thickest; and
the guns of the vessels fairly overbore and quelled the fire from the
fort. All was well, provided only the two columns could push straight on
without hesitation; but just at this moment a terrible calamity befell
the leader of the monitors. The Tecumseh, standing straight for the
Tennessee, was within two hundred yards of her foe, when a torpedo
suddenly exploded beneath her. The monitor was about five hundred yards
from the Hartford, and from the maintop Farragut, looking at her, saw
her reel violently from side to side, lurch heavily over, and go down
headforemost, her screw revolving wildly in the air as she disappeared.
Captain Craven, one of the gentlest and bravest of men, was in the
pilot-house with the pilot at the time. As she sank, both rushed to
the narrow door, but there was time for only one to get out. Craven was
ahead, but drew to one side, saying, "After you, pilot." As the pilot
leaped through, the water rushed in, and Craven and all his crew, save
two men, settled to the bottom in their iron coffin.

None of the monitors were awed or daunted by the fate of their consort,
but drew steadily onward. In the bigger monitors the captains, like the
crews, had remained within the iron walls; but on the two light crafts
the commanders had found themselves so harassed by their cramped
quarters, that they both stayed outside on the deck. As these two
steamed steadily ahead, the men on the flagship saw Captain Stevens,
of the Winnebago, pacing calmly, from turret to turret, on his unwieldy
iron craft, under the full fire of the fort. The captain of the
Chickasaw, Perkins, was the youngest commander in the fleet, and as he
passed the Hartford, he stood on top of the turret, waving his hat and
dancing about in wildest excitement and delight.

But, for a moment, the nerve of the commander of the Brooklyn failed
him. The awful fate of the Tecumseh and the sight of a number of objects
in the channel ahead, which seemed to be torpedoes, caused him to
hesitate. He stopped his ship, and then backed water,