the fleet's course and led the van on the sunward side
to bring themselves first and nearest to Morgan, its water-battery, and
the _Tennessee_.

Anna sighed while to Miranda the man overflowed with information. Ah,
ah! in Hampton Roads the _Virginia_ had barely coped with one of those
horrors, of one hump, two guns; while here came four, whose humps were
six and their giant rifles twelve.

"Twenty-two guns in our whole flotilla," the man was saying to Miranda,
"and they've got nearly two hundred." The anchor was up. Gently the
boat's engines held her against the flood-tide. The man had turned to
add some word, when from the land side of Gaines a single columbiad
roared and a huge shell screamed off into the investing entrenchments.
Then some lighter guns, thirty-twos, twenty-fours, cracked and rang, and
the foe replied. His shells burst over and in the fort, and a cloud of
white and brown smoke rolled eastward, veiling both this scene and the
remoter, seaward, silent, but far more momentous one of Fort Morgan, the
fleet, and the _Tennessee_.

The boat crept southward into the cloud, where only Gaines was dimly
visible, flashing and howling landward. Irby was in that flashing. Steve
was back yonder in Powell with Kincaid's Battery. Through Steve, present
at the reading of a will made at Vicksburg the day after Hilary's
capture there, Irby had just notified Anna, for Hilary, that their uncle
had left everything to him, Adolphe. She hoped it was true, but for once
in her life had doubts without discomfort. How idly the mind can drift
in fateful moments. The bell tapped for six. As it did so the two
watchers descried through a rift in the smoke the Tennessee signaling
her grim litter, and the four crawling forward to meet the ships. Again
the smoke closed in, but the small boat stole through it and hovered at
its edge while the minutes passed and the foe came on. How plain to be
seen was each pair, how familiar some of those taller shapes!

"The _Brooklyn_, 'Randa, right in front. And there again is the
admiral's flag, on the _Hartford_. And there, with her topmasts down, is
the _Richmond_--oh, 'Ran', it's the same bad dream once more!"

Not quite. There were ships new to them, great and less, whose savage
names, told by the man near the window, chilled the blood with reminder
of old wars and massacres: the _Winnebago, Chickasaw, Octorora, Ossipee,
Metacomet, Seminale_. "Look!" said the man, pointing, "the _Tecumseh_--