The Long Roll
third, riddled the smokestack and steam-pipe, carried away an anchor,
and killed or wounded nineteen men. The Virginia answered with three
guns; a cloud of smoke came between the iron-clad and the armed sloop;
it lifted--and we were on her. We struck her under the fore rigging with
a dull and grinding sound. The iron beak with which we were armed was
wrested off.
"The Virginia shivered, hung a moment, then backed clear of the
Cumberland, in whose side there was now a ragged and a gaping hole. The
pilot in the iron-clad pilot-house turned her head upstream. The water
was shoal; she had to run up the James some way before she could turn
and come back to attack the Congress. Her keel was in the mud; she was
creeping now like a land turtle, and all the iron shore was firing at
her.... She turned at last in freer water and came down the Roads.
Through the port we could see the Cumberland that we had rammed. She
had listed to port and was sinking. The water had reached her main deck;
all her men were now on the spar deck, where they yet served the pivot
guns. She fought to the last. A man of ours, stepping for one moment
through a port to the outside of the turtle's shell, was cut in two. As
the water rose and rose, the sound of her guns was like a lessening
thunder. One by one they stopped.... To the last she flew her colours.
The Cumberland went down.
"By now there had joined us the small, small James River squadron that
had been anchored far up the river. The Patrick Henry had twelve guns,
the Jamestown had two, and the Teaser one. Down they scurried like three
valiant marsh hens to aid the turtle. With the Beaufort and the Raleigh
there were five valiant pygmies, and they fired at the shore batteries,
and the shore batteries answered like an angry Jove with solid shot,
with shell, with grape, and with canister! A shot wrecked the boiler of
the Patrick Henry, scalding to death the men who were near.... The
turtle sank a transport steamer lying alongside the wharf at Newport
News, and then she rounded the point and bore down upon the Congress.
"The frigate had showed discretion, which is the better part of valour.
Noting how deeply we drew, she had slipped her cables and run aground in
the shallows where she was safe from the ram of the Merrimac. We could
get no nearer than two hundred feet. There we took up position, and
there we began to rake her, the Beaufort, the Raleigh, and the Jamestown
giving us what aid they might. She had fifty guns, and there were the
heavy shore batteries, and below her the Minnesota. This ship, also
aground in the Middle Channel, now came into action with a roar. A
hundred guns were trained upon the Merrimac. The iron hail beat down
every point, not iron-clad, that showed above our shell. The muzzle of
two guns were shot away, the stanchions, the boat davits, the flagstaff.
Again and again the flagstaff fell, and again and again we replaced it.
At last we tied the colours to the smokestack. Beside the nineteen poor
fellows that the Cumberland's guns had mowed down, we now had other
killed and wounded. Commodore Buchanan was badly hurt, and the flag
lieutenant, Minor. The hundred guns thundered against the Merrimac, and
the Merrimac thundered against the Congress. The tall frigate and her
fifty guns wished herself an iron-clad; the swan would have blithely
changed with the ugly duckling. We brought down her mainmast, we
disabled her guns, we strewed her decks with blood and anguish (war is a
wild beast, nothing more, and I'll hail the day when it lies slain). We
smashed in her sides and we set her afire. She hauled down her colours
and ran up a white flag. The Merrimac ceased firing and signalled to the
Beaufort. The Beaufort ran alongside, and the frigate's ranking officer
gave up his colours and his sword. The Beaufort's and the Congress's own
boats removed the crew and the wounded.... The shore batteries, the
Minnesota, the picket boat Zouave, kept up a heavy firing all the while
upon the Merrimac, upon the Raleigh and the Jamestown, and also upon the
Beaufort. We waited until the crew was clear of the Congress, and then
we gave her a round of hot shot that presently set her afire from stem
to stern. This done, we turned to other work.
"The Minnesota lay aground in the North Channel. To her aid hurrying up
from Old Point came the Roanoke and the Saint Lawrence. Our own
batteries at Sewell's Point opened upon these two ships as they passed,
and they answered with broadsides. We fed our engines, and under a
billow of black smoke ran down to the Minnesota. Like the Congress, she
lay upon a sand bar, beyond fear of ramming. We could only manoeuvre
for deep water, near enough to her to be deadly. It was now late
afternoon. I could see through the port of the bow pivot the slant
sunlight upon the water, and how the blue of the sky was paling. The
Minnesota lay just ahead; very tall she looked, another of the Congress
breed; the old warships singing their death song. As we came on we fired
the bow gun, then, lying nearer her, began with broadsides. But we could
not get near enough; she was lifted high upon the sand, the tide was
going out, and we drew twenty-three feet. We did her great harm, but we
were not disabling her. An hour passed and the sun drew on to setting.
The Roanoke turned and went back under the guns of Old Point, but the
Saint Lawrence remained to thunder at the turtle's iron shell. The
Merrimac was most unhandy, and on the ebb tide there would be shoals
enough between us and a berth for the night.... The Minnesota could not
get away, at dawn she would be yet aground, and we would then take her
for our prize. 'Stay till dusk, and the blessed old iron box will ground
herself where Noah's flood won't float her!' The pilot ruled, and in the
gold and purple sunset we drew off. As we passed, the Minnesota blazed
with all her guns; we answered her, and answered, too, the Saint
Lawrence. The evening star was shining when we anchored off Sewell's
Point. The wounded were taken ashore, for we had no place for wounded
men under the turtle's shell. Commodore Buchanan leaving us, Lieutenant
Catesby Ap Rice Jones took command.
"I do not remember what we had for supper. We had not eaten since early
morning, so we must have had something. But we were too tired to think
or to reason or to remember. We dropped beside our guns and slept, but
not for long. Three hours, perhaps, we slept, and then a whisper seemed
to run through the Merrimac. It was as though the iron-clad herself had
spoken, 'Come! watch the Congress die!' Most of us arose from beside the
guns and mounted to the iron grating above, to the top of the turtle's
shell. It was a night as soft as silk; the water smooth, in long, faint,
olive swells; a half-moon in the sky. There were lights across at Old
Point, lights on the battery at the Rip Raps, lights in the frightened
shipping, huddled under the guns of Fortress Monroe, lights along either
shore. There were lanterns in the rigging of the Minnesota where she lay
upon the sand bar, and lanterns on the Saint Lawrence and the Roanoke.
As we looked a small moving light, as low as possible to the water,
appeared between the Saint Lawrence and the Minnesota. A man said,
'What's that? Must be a rowboat.' Another answered, 'It's going too fast
for a rowboat--funny! right on the water like that!' 'A launch, I
reckon,' said a third, 'with plenty of rowers. Now it's behind the
Minnesota.'--'Shut up, you talkers,' said a midshipman, 'I want to look
at the Congress!'
"Four miles away, off Newport News, lay the burning Congress. In the
still, clear night, she seemed almost at hand. All her masts, her spars,
and her rigging showed black in the heart of a great ring of firelight.
Her hull, lifted high by the sand bank which held her, had round red
eyes. Her ports were windows lit from within. She made a vision of
beauty and of horror. One by one, as they were reached by the flame, her
guns exploded--a loud and awful sound in the night above the Roads. We
stood and watched that sea picture, and we watched in silence. We are
seeing giant things, and ere this war is ended we shall see more. At two
o'clock in the morning the fire reached her powder magazine. She blew
up. A column like the Israelite's Pillar shot to the zenith; there came
an earthquake sound, sullen and deep; when all cleared there was only
her hull upborne by the sand and still burning. It burned until the
dawn, when it smouldered and went out."
The narrator arose, walked the length of the parlour, and came back to
the four women. "Haven't you had enough for to-night? Unity looks
sleepy, and Judith's knitting has lain this half-hour on the floor.
Judith!"
Molly spoke. "Judith says that if there is fighting around Richmond she
is going there to the hospitals, to be a nurse. The doctors here say
that she does better than any one--"
"Go on, Edward," said Judith. "What happened at dawn?"
"We got the turtle in order, and those ancient mariners, our engines,
began to work, wheezing and slow. We ran up a new flagstaff, and every
man stood to the guns, and the Merrimac moved from Sewell's Point, her
head turned to the Minnesota, away across, grounded on a sand bank in
the North Channel. The sky was as pink as the inside of a shell, and a
thin white mist hung over the marshes and the shore and the great
stretch of Hampton Roads. It was so thin that the masts of the ships
huddled below Fortress Monroe rose clear of it into the flush of the
coming sun. All their pennants were flying--the French man-of-war, and
the northern ships. At that hour the sea-gulls are abroad, searching for
their food. They went past the ports, screaming and moving their silver
wings.
"The Minnesota grew in size. Every man of us looked eagerly--from the
pilot-house, from the bow ports, and as we drew parallel with her from
the ports of the side. We fired the bow gun as we came on and the shot
told. There was some cheering; the morning air was so fine and the prize
so sure! The turtle was in spirits--poor old turtle with her battered
shell and her flag put back as fast as it was torn away! Her engines,
this morning, were mortal slow and weak; they wheezed and whined, and
she drew so deep that, in that shoaly water, she went aground twice
between Sewell's Point and the stretch she had now reached of smooth
pink water, with the sea-gulls dipping between her and the Minnesota.
Despite the engines she was happy, and the gunners were all ready at the
starboard ports--"
Leaning over, he took the poker and stirred the fire.
"The best laid plans of mice and men
Do aften gang agley--"
Miss Lucy's needles clicked. "Yes, the papers told us. The Ericsson."
"There came," said Edward, "there came from behind the Minnesota a
cheese-box on a shingle. It had lain there hidden by her bulk since
midnight. It was its single light that we had watched and thought no
more of! A cheese-box on a shingle--and now it darted into the open as
though a boy's arm had sent it! It was little beside the Minnesota. It
was little even beside the turtle. There was a silence when we saw it, a
silence of astonishment. It had come so quietly upon the scene--a _deus
ex machina_, indeed, dropped from the clouds between us and our prey. In
a moment we knew it for the Ericsson--the looked-for other iron-clad we
knew to be a-building. The Monitor, they call it.... The shingle was
just awash; the cheese-box turned out to be a revolving turret,
mail-clad and carrying two large, modern guns--11-inch. The whole thing
was armoured, had the best of engines, and drew only twelve feet....
Well, the Merrimac had a startled breath, to be sure--there is no
denying the drama of the Monitor's appearance--and then she righted and