, charged full tilt against the chains that still held fast.
For one breathless moment the little _Itasca_ seemed lost. Her
bows rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was
suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in another
fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest schooners
gave way and swept back like a gate, while the _Itasca_ herself
shot clear and came down in triumph to the fleet.

The passage was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that
is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower
than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under
fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of
the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave
the lead to the 500-ton gunboat _Cayuga_. This was the one weak
point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have
been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; for his heart got
the better of his head when it came to placing Captain Theodorus
Bailey, his dauntless second-in-command, on board a vessel fit
to lead the starboard column. He could not bear to obscure any
captain's chances of distinction by putting another captain over
him. So Bailey was sent to the best vessel commanded by a lieutenant.

The _Cayuga's_ navigating officer, finding that the guns of the
forts were all trained on midstream, edged in towards Fort St.
Philip. His masts were shot to pieces, but his hull drew clear
without great damage. "Then," he says, "I looked back for some
of our vessels; and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found
I could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been
sunk by the forts." But not a ship had gone down. The three big
ones of the starboard column--_Pensacola, Mississippi_, and
_Oneida_--closed with the fort (so that the gunners on both sides
exchanged jeers of defiance) and kept up a furious fire till the
lighter craft astern slipped past safely and joined the _Cayuga_
above.

Meanwhile the _Cayuga_ had been attacked by a mob of Mississippi
steamers, six of which belonged to the original fourteen blessed
with their precious independence by Secretary Benjamin, "backed
by the whole Missouri Delegation." So when the rest of the Federal
light craft came up, "all sorts of things happened" in a general
free fight. There was no lack of Confederate courage; but an utter
absence of concerted action and of the simplest kind of naval skill