though
they insured the destruction of the schooner, they also lighted up the
creek, showing the boats with the sailors bending to their oars to
escape the storm of bullets that they knew must follow. The glare of
the burning schooner, the reflection of the flames on the water, the
flash of the rifles from the shores made a wild picture. Occasionally
a flash from the river was followed by a deep boom, as a heavy shot
left the muzzle of a cannon on the steamers. But through it all, the
men escaped; and the projected invasion of the Confederates was
abandoned, owing to the loss of their schooner.

All through the war this untiring patrol of the Potomac was continued.
Among miasmatic vapors and clouds of noxious insects on mud-flats, in
narrow channels whose densely wooded banks might conceal legions of
hostile sharp-shooters, the river navy kept up its work. Earning but
little glory, though in the midst of constant peril, the officers and
men kept up their work, and contributed not a little to the final
outcome of the great conflict.

All this time the officers of the naval vessels, riding at anchor in
Hampton Roads, were chafing under the enforced idleness. Even the
occasional artillery duels with which their army brethren whiled away
the time were denied to the wistful blue-jackets. Beyond an occasional
chase, generally useless, after a fleet blockade-runner, the sailors
had absolutely no employment. At last, however, the opportunity came.
The first great naval expedition of the war was set under way.

From Cape Henry, at the mouth of the James River, the coast of
Virginia and North Carolina sweeps grandly out to the eastward, like a
mammoth bow, with its lower end at Beaufort, two hundred miles south.
Along this coast-line the great surges of mighty ocean, rolling with
unbroken course from the far-off shore of Europe, trip and fall with
unceasing roar upon an almost uninterrupted beach of snowy sand, a
hundred and more miles long. Near the southern end of this expanse of
sand stands a lighthouse, towering solitary above the surrounding
plain of sea and sand. No inviting beacon giving notice to the weary
marines of safe haven is this steady light that pierces the darkness
night after night. It tells of treacherous shoals and roaring
breakers; of the loss of many a good ship, whose ribs, half buried in
the drifting sand, lie rotting in the salt air; of skies ever
treacherous, and waters ever turbulent. It is the ligh