raight for the _Minnesota_. Her day's
work was evidently not yet done. She must have another victim before
returning to her moorings.

CHAPTER VII.

THE GREAT NAVAL COMBAT.

When Terry saw the ugly black ironclad bearing down upon the
_Minnesota_, he could not suppress a cry of consternation.

"Oh, whirra! whirra!" he burst forth, dancing from one foot to the
other, and swinging his arms about in the extremity of his excitement,
"the murderin' thing is coming right for us, and it's smashing us to
bits entirely she'll be."

That the captain of the frigate held the same opinion, however
differently he might have expressed it, was soon manifest from the
manoeuvring of his ship; for instead of remaining out in the north
channel, where there was sufficient depth of water for the _Merrimac_
to move freely, he turned his vessel's bow seaward, and kept on in that
direction until she had grounded on a shoal about midway between
Fortress Monroe and Newport News Point.

All danger from the irresistible ram was now over, as the ironclad
could not approach within some hundreds of yards without getting
aground herself, which would have put an end to her career; so those on
board the _Minnesota_ began to pluck up courage again. Even Terry felt
more composed when he realized that the "murderin' thing," as he called
it, had to keep a respectful distance.

But they were not permitted to enjoy this little bit of comfort long.
The big frigate, towering high above the water, offered only too easy a
target to the rifled guns of the _Merrimac_, and presently their
destructive missiles began to come crashing through her wooden sides as
though they had been paper, inflicting fearful damage and slaughter.

Yet nothing daunted by the immediate presence of danger and death, the
men of the _Minnesota_ plied their own formidable battery; and although
the cannon-balls' bounced harmlessly off the impregnable sides of the
ironclad, they did their work against her attendant gunboats, so that
both had ere long to retire from the combat.

The decks of the frigate soon presented a pitiable sight. The heavy
guns of the _Merrimac_ had again and again raked them with dreadful
effect, and the dead and the dying lay strewn about, confused with
splintered beams and shattered gun-carriages. The ship's surgeons,
recking nothing of their own danger, were busy binding up wounds, and
having the poor sufferers borne below; while through the smoke