smooth
pink water, with the sea-gulls dipping between her and the Minnesota.
Despite the engines she was happy, and the gunners were all ready at the
starboard ports--"

Leaning over, he took the poker and stirred the fire.

"The best laid plans of mice and men
Do aften gang agley--"

Miss Lucy's needles clicked. "Yes, the papers told us. The Ericsson."

"There came," said Edward, "there came from behind the Minnesota a
cheese-box on a shingle. It had lain there hidden by her bulk since
midnight. It was its single light that we had watched and thought no
more of! A cheese-box on a shingle--and now it darted into the open as
though a boy's arm had sent it! It was little beside the Minnesota. It
was little even beside the turtle. There was a silence when we saw it, a
silence of astonishment. It had come so quietly upon the scene--a _deus
ex machina_, indeed, dropped from the clouds between us and our prey. In
a moment we knew it for the Ericsson--the looked-for other iron-clad we
knew to be a-building. The Monitor, they call it.... The shingle was
just awash; the cheese-box turned out to be a revolving turret,
mail-clad and carrying two large, modern guns--11-inch. The whole thing
was armoured, had the best of engines, and drew only twelve feet....
Well, the Merrimac had a startled breath, to be sure--there is no
denying the drama of the Monitor's appearance--and then she righted and
began firing. She gave to the cheese-box, or to the armoured turret, one
after the other, three broadsides. The turret blazed and answered, and
the balls rebounded from each armoured champion." He laughed. "By
Heaven! it was like our old favourites, Ivanhoe and De Bois
Guilbert--the ugliest squat gnomes of an Ivanhoe and of a Brian de Bois
Guilbert that ever came out of a nightmare! We thundered in the lists,
and then we passed each other, turned, and again encountered. Sometimes
we were a long way apart, and sometimes there was not ten feet of water
between those sunken decks from which arose the iron shell of the
Merrimac and the iron turret of the Monitor. She fired every seven
minutes; we as rapidly as we could load. Now it was the bow gun, now the
after pivot, now a full broadside. Once or twice we thought her done
for, but always her turret revolved, and her 11-inch guns opened again.
In her lighter draught she had a great advantage; she could turn and
wind where we could not. The Minnesota took a