with indentations like
spinning-top moulds or saucers. They were gouged, dented, and bruised
by case-shot that had struck and glanced sidewise. Here and there, it
looked as though an adamantine serpent had grooved its way over the
convex iron surface, as a worm leaves the mark of its crawling in the
soft earth under the stone. The _Catskill_ had received thirty shots,
the _Keokuk_ a hundred. Inside of the _Nahant_, Carleton found eleven
officers and men badly contused by the flying of bolt-heads in the
turret; but, except from a temporary jam, her armor was intact. On the
_Patapsco_ a ball had ripped up the plating and pierced the work
beneath. This was the only shot that had penetrated any of the
monitors. The _Weehawken_ had in one place the pittings of three shots
which, had they immediately followed each other, might, like the
arrows of the Earl of Douglas in Scott's "Lady of the Lake," split
each other in twain. Except leaving war's honorable scar, these three
bolts hurt not the _Weehawken_. Out of probably three thousand
projectiles shot from behind walls, about three hundred and fifty took
effect, that is, one shot out of six. Three tons of iron were hurled
at Fort Sumter, and probably six tons at the fleet. Fighting inside of
iron towers, the Union men had no one killed, and but one mortally
wounded. The _Keokuk_, the most vulnerable of all the ships engaged,
sank under the northwest wind in the heavy sea of the next day.

It was long after midnight when Carleton finished the closing lines of
his letter, and then stepped out upon the steamer's guard for a
little fresh air. Over on Sumter's walls the signal-light was being
waved. The black monitors lay at their anchorage. Ocean, air, and
moonbeams were calm and peaceful. From the flag-ship, which the
despatch steamer visited, the report was, "The engagement is to be
renewed to-morrow afternoon." Nevertheless, the next day, Admiral Du
Pont, dissenting from the opinions of his engineers and inspectors, as
to a renewal of the attack, moreover finding his own officers
differing in their opinions as to the ability of the fleet to reduce
Fort Sumter, ordered no advance. The enterprise was, for the present,
at least, given up. So Carleton, after another letter on white and
black humanity in South Carolina, which showed convincingly the
results of slavery, sailed from Hilton Head.

Like the war-horse of Hebrew poetry, he smelt the battle afar off, and
looked to Virgini