hortly after dark (although the firing was kept up at intervals
during the night), and the leading boats dropped back to allow others to
take their places.

"We are not whipped, are we?" exclaimed Marcy, when he witnessed this
retrograde movement.

"Oh, no," replied the captain, as he backed down from the top. "We have
done just what we set out to do when we began the fight this morning,
and, having won all the honors that rightfully belong to us, we must
fall astern, and let somebody else have a show to-morrow."

Marcy followed the captain to the deck, and was greatly surprised by
what he saw when he got there. There were wide openings in the
hammock-nettings that he had not seen there in the morning, and the
ports, through which two of the broadside guns worked, had been torn
into one. Some of the standing rigging was not taut and ship-shape, as
it ought to have been, but was flying loose in the breeze, and there
were one or two dark spots on the deck which looked as though they had
been drenched with water, and afterward sanded. Marcy's heart almost
stopped beating when he saw these things, for they told him that the
vessel had suffered during the fight, and that some of her crew had been
killed or wounded, and he never knew it. But the sight of a flag which a
gray-headed quartermaster was just hauling down from the masthead, drove
gloomy thoughts out of his mind, and sent a thrill of triumph all
through him. It was his own flag, and it had been floating over his head
all day long. He took supper with Captain Benton, and afterward went
below to see the poor fellows who had not come out of the fight as well
as he did. Two of them were laid in the engine-room, covered with the
flag in defense of which they had given up their lives, and four others
were wounded. The sight was nothing to those that his rebel cousin,
Rodney, the Partisan, had often witnessed on the field of battle; but it
was enough to show Marcy Gray that there was a terrible reality in war.

The next day was the army's. The battle began at seven in the morning;
and although the gunboats, Captain Benton's among the rest, did the work
they were expected to do and succeeded in passing the obstructions
shortly after noon, the heaviest of the fighting was done by the
soldiers. The Confederate flag went down before the sun did, and
twenty-five hundred prisoners, forty heavy guns, and three thousand
stand of small arms fell into the hands of the victors. Th