thought that
flashed through Marcy's mind and awoke him to a sense of his
responsibility. "I don't know where we are." Then aloud he said: "I
can't see a thing from the bridge, Captain. I shall have to go aloft."

The boy did not know whether or not pilots were in the habit of going
aloft in the heat of action, but he thought it was the proper thing to
do under the circumstances. He went, and he did not go any too soon,
either; for when he had climbed up where he could see over the thickest
of the smoke, he found to his consternation that the vessel was heading
diagonally across the channel far to the eastward of the position in
which she ought to be, that she would be hard and fast aground if she
held that course five minutes longer, and that her shells were exploding
in the edge of a piece of timber where he could not see any signs of a
fort or breastwork. It was the work of but a few seconds for Marcy to
make Captain Benton understand the situation, and when the latter had
brought his ship to her proper course by following the instructions the
young pilot shouted down to him, he came up and took his stand in the
top by Marcy's side. There they both remained as long as the fight
continued, and their dinner consisted of a sandwich and a cup of coffee,
which the cabin steward brought up to them at noon.

The first object of the bombardment was accomplished about five o'clock
that afternoon, when a heavy smoke was rolling over Fort Bartow, caused
by the burning of the barracks, which had been set on fire by a shell
from the fleet, the defiant roar of its guns being almost silenced, and
its flaunting banner sent to the dust by the shooting away of the staff
that sustained it, and the enemy, all along the line, had been driven so
far back that the transports could come up with the troops. It was at
this juncture that the services of Mr. Daniel's black boy, Tom, came
into play. He piloted General Burnside's launches and lighters into
Ashby's Harbor, and, by midnight, ten thousand soldiers were landed in
readiness for the real battle, which was to begin on the following
morning. By this time the Confederates must have been satisfied that
they were going to be whipped. Commodore Lynch knew that he had had all
the fighting he wanted; for he retreated round Wier's Point, and was
never seen afterward until Captain Rowan, with a portion of the Union
fleet, hunted him up, and finished him at Elizabeth City. The battle was
over s