allender himself knew no
more than I. We had not been hit. We were all right as a trivet for all
we knew, when, skree! she began blowing off steam, and we stopped dead,
and began to drift down under those batteries. Callender had to
telegraph to the little Mosquito, or whatever Walter called his boat,
and the spunky little thing ran down and got us out of the scrape.
Walter did it right well; if he had had a monitor under him he could not
have done better. Of course we all rushed to the engine-room. What in
thunder were they at there? All they knew was they could get no water
into her boiler.

"Now, fellows, this is the end of the story. As soon as the boilers
cooled off they worked all right on those supply pumps. May I be hanged
if they had not sucked in, somehow, a long string of yarn, and cloth,
and, if you will believe me, a wire of some woman's crinoline. And that
French folly of a sham Empress cut short that day the victory of the
Confederate navy, and old Davis himself can't tell when we shall have
such a chance again!"

Some of the men thought Norton lied. But I never was with him when he
did not tell the truth. I did not mention, however, what I had thrown
into the water the last time I had gone over to Manchester. And I
changed my mind about Sarah's "secret-service" parcel. It remained on my
table.

That was the last dinner our old club had at the Spotswood, I believe.
The spring came on, and the plot thickened. We did our work in the
office as well as we could; I can speak for mine, and if other
people--but no matter for that! The 3d of April came, and the fire, and
the right wing of Grant's army. I remember I was glad then that I had
moved the office down to the house, for we were out of the way there.
Everybody had run away from the Department; and so, when the powers that
be took possession, my little sub-bureau was unmolested for some days. I
improved those days as well as I could,--burning carefully what was to
be burned, and hiding carefully what was to be hidden. One thing that
happened then belongs to this story. As I was at work on the private
bureau,--it was really a bureau, as it happened, one I had made Aunt
Eunice give up when I broke my leg,--I came, to my horror, on a neat
parcel of coast-survey maps of Georgia, Alabama, and Florida. They were
not the same Maury stole when he left the National Observatory, but they
were like them. Now I was perfectly sure that on that fatal Sunday of
the f