Part 25 (1/2)
”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 sh.e.l.l, and a thin white mist hung over the marshes and the sh.o.r.e and the great stretch of Hampton Roads. It was so thin that the masts of the s.h.i.+ps 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 s.h.i.+ps. 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 sh.e.l.l 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 s.h.i.+ngle. 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 s.h.i.+ngle--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 s.h.i.+ngle 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 began firing. She gave to the cheese-box, or to the armoured turret, one after the other, three broadsides. The turret blazed and answered, and the b.a.l.l.s rebounded from each armoured champion.” He laughed. ”By Heaven! it was like our old favourites, Ivanhoe and De Bois Guilbert--the ugliest squat gnomes of an Ivanhoe and of a Brian de Bois Guilbert that ever came out of a nightmare! We thundered in the lists, and then we pa.s.sed each other, turned, and again encountered. Sometimes we were a long way apart, and sometimes there was not ten feet of water between those sunken decks from which arose the iron sh.e.l.l of the Merrimac and the iron turret of the Monitor. She fired every seven minutes; we as rapidly as we could load. Now it was the bow gun, now the after pivot, now a full broadside. Once or twice we thought her done for, but always her turret revolved, and her 11-inch guns opened again.
In her lighter draught she had a great advantage; she could turn and wind where we could not. The Minnesota took a hand, and an iron battery from the sh.o.r.e. We were striving to ram the Ericsson, but we could not get close to her; our iron beak, too, was sticking in the side of the sunken c.u.mberland--we could only ram with the blunt prow. The Minnesota, as we pa.s.sed, gave us all her broadside guns--a tremendous fusillade at point-blank range, which would have sunk any s.h.i.+p of the swan breed. The turtle shook off shot and sh.e.l.l, grape and canister, and answered with her bow gun. The sh.e.l.l which it threw entered the side of the frigate, and, bursting amids.h.i.+p, exploded a store of powder and set the s.h.i.+p on fire. Leaving disaster aboard the Minnesota, we turned and sunk the tugboat Dragon. Then came manoeuvre and manoeuvre to gain position where we could ram the Monitor....
”We got it at last. The engines made an effort like the leap of the spirit before expiring. 'Go ahead! Full speed!' We went; we bore down upon the Monitor, now in deeper water. But at the moment that we saw victory she turned. Our bow, lacking the iron beak, gave but a glancing stroke. It was heavy as it was; the Monitor shook like a man with the ague, but she did not share the fate of the c.u.mberland. There was no ragged hole in her side; her armour was good, and held. She backed, gathered herself together, then rushed forward, striving to ram us in her turn. But our armour, too, was good, and held. Then she came upon the Merrimac's quarter, laid her bow against the sh.e.l.l, and fired her 11-inch guns twice in succession. We were so close, each to the other, that it was as though two duelists were standing upon the same cloak.
Frightful enough was the concussion of those guns.
”That charge drove in the Merrimac's iron side three inches or more. The shots struck above the ports of the after guns, and every man at those guns was knocked down by the impact and bled at the nose and ears. The Monitor dropped astern, and again we turned and tried to ram her. But her far lighter draught put her where we could not go; our bow, too, was now twisted and splintered. Our powder was getting low. We did not spare it, we could not; we sent shot and sh.e.l.l continuously against the Monitor, and she answered in kind. Monitor and Merrimac, we went now this way, now that, the Ericsson much the lighter and quickest, the Merrimac fettered by her poor old engines, and her great length, and her twenty-three feet draught. It was two o'clock in the afternoon.... The duelists stepped from off the cloak, tried operations at a distance, hung for a moment in the wind of indecision, then put down the match from the gunners' hands. The Monitor darted from us, her head toward the shoal water known as the Middle Ground. She reached it and rested triumphant, out of all danger from our ram, and yet where she could still protect the Minnesota.... A curious silence fell upon the Roads; sullen like the hush before a thunderstorm, and yet not like that, for we had had the thunderstorm. It was the stillness, perhaps, of exhaustion. It was late afternoon, the fighting had been heavy. The air was filled with smoke; in the water were floating spars and wreckage of the s.h.i.+ps we had destroyed. The weather was sultry and still. The dogged booming of a gun from a sh.o.r.e battery sounded lonely and remote as a bell buoy. The tide was falling; there were sand-bars enough between us and Sewell's Point. We waited an hour. The Monitor was rightly content with the Middle Ground, and would not come back for all our charming. We fired at intervals, upon her and upon the Minnesota, but at last our powder grew so low that we ceased. The tide continued to fall, and the pilot had much to say.... The red sun sank in the west; the engineers fed the ancient mariners with Montgomery coal; black smoke gushed forth and pilots felt their way into the South Channel, and slowly, slowly back toward Sewell's Point. The day closed in a murky evening with a taste of smoke in the air. In the night-time the Monitor went down the Roads to Fortress Monroe, and in the morning we took the Merrimac into dry dock at Norfolk. Her armour was dented all over, though not pierced.
Her bow was bent and twisted, the iron beak lost in the side of the c.u.mberland. Her boats were gone, and her smokestack as full of holes as any colander, and the engines at the last gasp. Several of the guns were injured, and coal and powder and ammunition all lacked. We put her there--the dear and ugly wars.h.i.+p, the first of the iron-clads--we put her there in dry dock, and there she's apt to stay for some weeks to come. Lieutenant Wood was sent to Richmond with the report for the president and the secretary of the navy. He carried, too, the flag of the Congress, and I was one of the men detailed for its charge.... And now I have told you of the Merrimac and the Monitor.”
Rising, he went to the piano, sat down and played ”Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre.” Miss Lucy took up her knitting, and knitted very rapidly, her eyes now upon her nephew, now upon her father's portrait. Judith, rising from the old cross-st.i.tch tabouret where she had been sitting, laid a fresh log on the fire, then went and stood beside the long window, looking out upon the rainy night.
”What,” asked Edward between two chords, ”what do you hear from the Valley?”
Unity answered: ”General Banks has crossed the Potomac and entered Winchester--poor, poor Winchester! General Jackson hasn't quite five thousand men. He has withdrawn toward Woodstock. In spite of that dreadful Romney march, General Johnston and the soldiers seem to have confidence in him--”
Molly came in with her soft little voice. ”Major Stafford has been transferred. He is with General Ewell on the Rappahannock. He writes to Judith every week. They are beautiful letters--they make you see everything that is done.”
”What do you hear from Richard Cleave?”
”He never writes.”
Judith came back from the window. ”It is raining, raining! The petals are falling from the pyrus j.a.ponica, and all the trees are bending!
Edward, war is terrible, but it lifts you up....” She locked her hands behind her head. ”It lifts you up, out in the storm or listening to what the s.h.i.+ps have done, or to the stories that are told! And then you look at the unploughed land, and you wait for the bulletins, and you go to the hospital down there, ... and you say, 'Never--oh, nevermore let us have war!'”
CHAPTER XV
KERNSTOWN
The brigade was halted before a stretch of forest white with dogwood.
Ahead began a slow cannonade. Puffs of smoke rose above the hill that hid the iron combatants. ”Ashby's Horse Artillery,” said the men.
”That's the Blakeley now! Boys, I reckon we're in for it!”
An aide pa.s.sed at a gallop. ”s.h.i.+elds and nine thousand men. Ashby was misinformed--more than we thought--s.h.i.+elds and nine thousand men.”
Along the line the soldiers slightly moved their feet, moistened their lips. The 65th occupied a fairy dell where Quaker ladies, blue as the heavens, bloomed by every stone. A Federal battery opened from a hill to the right. A screaming sh.e.l.l entered the wood, dug into earth, and exploded, showering all around with mould. There came a great burst of music--the Northern bands playing as the regiments deployed. ”That's 'Yankee Doodle!'” said the men. ”Everybody's cartridge-box full? Johnny Lemon, don't you forgit to take your ramrod out before you fire!”