ds and reflecting her lurid lights on the
bosom of the now placid and hushed waters. Every now and then the flames
would reach one of the loaded cannon and a shell would hiss at random
through the darkness. About midnight came the grand finale. The
magazines exploded, shooting up a huge column of firebrands hundreds of
feet in the air, and then the burning hulk burst asunder and melted into
the waters, while the calm night spread her sable mantle over Hampton
Roads.

The _Monitor_ arrived during the evening and anchored under the stern of
the _Minnesota_, her lighter draught enabling her to do so without
danger. To us the ensuing engagement was in the nature of a surprise.
If we had known we were to meet her we would have at least been supplied
with solid shot for our rifled guns. We might even have thought best to
wait until our iron beak, lost in the side of the _Cumberland_, could be
replaced. Buchanan was incapacitated by his wound, and the command
devolved upon Lieutenant Jones.

We left our anchorage shortly before eight o'clock next morning and
steamed across and up stream toward the _Minnesota_, thinking to make
short work of her and soon return with her colors trailing under ours.
We approached her slowly, feeling our way cautiously along the edge of
the channel, when suddenly, to our astonishment, a black object that
looked like the historic description, "a barrel-head afloat with a
cheese-box on top of it," moved slowly out from under the _Minnesota_
and boldly confronted us. It must be confessed that both ships were
queer-looking craft, as grotesque to the eyes of the men of '62 as they
would appear to those of the present generation.

And now the great fight was on, a fight the like of which the world had
never seen. With the battle of yesterday old methods had passed away,
and with them the experience of a thousand years "of battle and of
breeze" was brought to naught.

We hovered about each other in spirals, gradually contracting the
circuits until we were within point-blank range, but our shell glanced
from the _Monitor's_ turret just as hers did from our sloping sides. For
two hours the cannonade continued without perceptible damage to either
of the combatants.

On our gun-deck all was bustle, smoke, grimy figures, and stern
commands, while down in the engine and boiler rooms the sixteen furnaces
were belching out fire and smoke, and the firemen standing in front of
them, like so many gladiators,