guns, which the sailors call its battery, are very powerful. There
are two nine-inch guns, and also two sixty-four-pounders, rifled, at the
bow. There are two forty-two-pounders at the stern, and those upon the
side are thirty-twos and twenty-fours. There are rooms for the officers,
but the men sleep in hammocks. They take their meals sitting on the
gun-carriages, or cross-legged, like Turks, on the floor.

Captain Foote is the Commodore of the fleet. He points out to you the
_Sacred Place_ of the ship,--a secluded corner, where any one of the
crew who loves to read his Bible and hold secret devotion may do so, and
not be disturbed. He has given a library of good books to the crew, and
he has persuaded them that it will be better for them to give up their
allowance of grog than to drink it. He walks among the men, and has a
kind word for all, and they look upon him as their father. They have
confidence in him. How lustily they cheer him! Will they not fight
bravely under such a commander?

* * * * *

On Monday afternoon, February 2d, the gunboats Cincinnati, Essex, St.
Louis, Carondelet, Lexington, Tyler, and Conestoga sailed from Cairo,
accompanied by several river steamboats with ten regiments of troops.
They went up the Ohio to Paducah, and entered the Tennessee River at
dark. The next morning, about daylight, they anchored a few miles below
Fort Henry. Commodore Foote made the Cincinnati his flag-ship.

A party of scouts went on shore and called at a farm-house. "You never
will take Fort Henry," said the woman living there.

"O yes, we shall; we have a fleet of iron-clad gunboats," said one of
the scouts.

"Your gunboats will be blown sky-high before they get up to the fort."

"Ah! how so?"

The woman saw that she was letting out a secret, and became silent. The
scouts mistrusted that she knew something which might be desirable for
them to know, and informed her that, unless she told all she knew, she
must go with them a prisoner. She was frightened, and informed them that
the river was full of torpedoes, which would blow up the gunboats.

The scouts reported to Commodore Foote. The river was searched with
grappling-irons, and six infernal machines were fished up; but they were
imperfectly constructed, and not one of them would explode.

Looking up the river from the deck of one of Commodore Foote's gunboats
you see Panther Island, which is a mile from the fort. It is a long