rtford's_ hawse"; but they did not see, atom-small, perched high
in the rigging of the flag-ship and demanding from the decks below, "why
this?" and "why that?" a certain "plain sailor" well known to New
Orleans and the wide world; did not see the torpedoes lying in watery
ambush for him, nor hear the dread tale of them called to him from the
_Brooklyn_ while his ship passed astern of her, nor him command "full
speed ahead" as he retorted, "Damn the torpedoes!"

They saw his ship and her small consort sweep undestroyed over the
dead-line, the _Brooklyn_ follow with hers, the Mobile gunboats rake
the four with a fire they could not return, and behind them Fort Morgan
and the other ships rend and shatter each other, shroud the air with
smoke and thresh the waters white with shot and shell, shrapnel,
canister and grape. And then they saw their own _Tennessee_ ignore the
monitors and charge the _Hartford_. But they beheld, too, the
_Hartford's_ better speed avoid the fearful blow and press on up the
channel and the bay, though torn and bleeding from her foe's broadside,
while her own futilely glanced or rebounded from his impenetrable mail.

Wisely, rightly their boat turned and slowly drew away toward Fort
Powell and Cedar Point. Yet as from her after deck they saw the same
exploit, at the same murderous cost, repeated by the _Brooklyn_ and
another and another great ship and their consorts, while not a torpedo
did its work, they tearfully called the hour "glorious" and "victorious"
for the _Tennessee_ and her weak squadron, that still fought on. So it
seemed to them even when more dimly, as distance and confusion grew and
rain-clouds gathered, they saw a wooden ship ram the _Tennessee_, but
glance off, and the slow _Tennessee_ drop astern, allow a sixth tall
ship and small consort to pass, but turn in the wake of the seventh and
all but disembowel her with the fire of her great bow gun.

Ah, Anna! Even so, the shattered, steam-scalded thing came on and the
last of the fleet was in. Yonder, a mere league eastward, it moved up
the bay. Yet proudly hope throbbed on while still Mobile, behind other
defenses, lay thirty miles away, while her gunboats still raked the
ships, while on Powell, Gaines and Morgan still floated the Southern
cross, and while, down in the pass, still unharmed, paused only for
breath the _Tennessee_.

"Prisoners! they are all our prisoners!" tearfully exulted the fond
Callenders. But on the word they