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The Morgan and the Gaines took advantage of it to change their course for Fort Morgan; the third Confederate, the Selma, kept straight on, as did the Metacomet. When the squall cleared, the latter found herself ahead of her chase. One shot was fired, killing the first lieutenant and some of the crew of the Selma, whose flag was then hauled down.
So he ordered the flagship Hartford and her lashedtogether consort, the double-ender Metacomet, to use, the one her screw, the other her paddles, in opposite directions, till he had cleared the Brooklyn's stern. As he, drew clear and headed for the danger-channel a shoutwent up from the Brooklyn's deck "'ware torpedoes!" But Farragut, his mind made up, instantly roared back "Damn the torpedoes!"
Meanwhile the people of New England had another foe to fight. You remember that the Pilgrim Fathers had made a treaty with the Indians when they first arrived. As long as the old Chief Massasoit lived he kept that treaty. But now he was dead, and his son Philip ruled. You will wonder, perhaps, why an Indian chief should have a name like Philip. But Philip's real name was Metacomet.
Great was the sachem Mas-sa-so-it, who ruled mildly but firmly, and was to his people a father as well as a chief. Of his children, two sons were named Wamsutta and Metacomet. They were renamed, in English, Alexander and Philip, by the governor of this colony of Plymouth. Alexander was the elder.
The charge against him never was pressed, because his rage and shame at the insult threw him into a fever, from which he soon died. He had reigned only a few months. In this year 1662 Philip or Metacomet took his place as grand sachem of the Pokanokets. The death of his brother grieved him. Wetamoo, the young widow, said that Alexander had been poisoned by his captors, the English.
"During this contest with the rebel gunboats and the ram Tennessee, which terminated by her surrender at ten o'clock, we lost many more men than from the fire of the batteries of Fort Morgan." The rebel Admiral Buchanan was severely wounded, and subsequently lost a leg by amputation. This request was granted, and the Metacomet despatched with them.
Backing hard, therefore, the wheels of the Metacomet, while turning her own screw ahead, her bows were twisted short round, as in a like strait they had been pointed fair under the batteries of Port Hudson; then, going ahead fast, the two ships passed close under the stern of the Brooklyn and dashed straight at the line of the buoys.
A thick rainsquall came up, and rendered it impossible for the rear gunboats to know whither the Confederate flotilla had fled. When it cleared away, the watchers on the fleet saw that one of the two which were uninjured had slipped off to Fort Morgan, while the other, the Selma, was under the guns of the Metacomet, and was promptly carried by the latter.
By this arrangement each pair of ships was given a double chance to escape, if rendered helpless by a shot in the boiler or other vital part of the machinery. The heaviest ships led in the fighting column, the first place being taken by the Brooklyn and her gunboat consort, while the second position was held by Farragut himself in the Hartford, with the little Metacomet lashed alongside.
The Indians of the expedition were Abenakis and Mohegans, who had left the far-off Atlantic coast and Acadian rivers, and wandered into the great west after the unsuccessful war in New England, which was waged by the Sachem Metacomet, better known as King Philip, and only ended with his death in 1676, and the destruction of many settlements in the colony of Plymouth.
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