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Updated: May 19, 2025
The thing's getting no farther, sir, no farther, except, of course, for the very pertinent fact about Mrs. Bunning's absence from her quarters that fateful evening. My own impression, sir, is that Hawthwaite and all the rest of 'em don't know the right way of going about this business. But the Monitor's going to wade in, sir the Monitor is coming to the rescue!
It was a mistake to place the conning-tower so far from the turret and the vitals of the ship. Since that time it has been located over the turret. The Monitor's turret was a death-trap. It was only twenty feet in diameter, and every shot knocked off bolt-heads and sent them flying against the gunners.
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 an hour or more we watched from the deck of the Rhode Island the lonely light upon the Monitor's turret; a hundred times we thought it gone forever, a hundred times it reappeared, till at last, about two o'clock, Wednesday morning, it sank, and we saw it no more.
To lighten the load as much as possible and counterbalance the weight of water in the wrecked conning tower Ted released the torpedoes remaining in the tubes. In a few minutes the indicator hand pointed to zero and the Monitor's officers realized that now their craft was riding awash with her deck fully exposed. Making his way forward through the gloom, Ted sprang to the hatch and raised the lid.
"What's up now?" he asked as he swept the horizon. "Destroyer right ahead, sir," reported Jack as he indicated the position of the vessel. McClure picked it up with his glasses, and by taking the Monitor's position was able very shortly to determine that the vessel was off the entrance to Ostend. "We might as well run up a bit closer and take a shot at her anyway," he announced shortly.
Another boat was sent to bring off the remainder of the Monitor's crew, but, being to leeward now, she could make only slow headway against the seas, and before she got to her the men saw the Monitor's light disappear, and knew that she had gone down.
Miss Brokaw stepped to the monitor's desk at one side and tapped on the bell. "Oh, mercy!" gasped Heavy, the incorrigible. "She's shut us off again. And I haven't had half enough to eat." "Rise!" said Miss Brokaw, after a moment of waiting. "Immediately, girls. Miss Stone, you will come, too."
So feeble and confined in the function of judgment through which it must see and act, it is especially incapable of admitting the monitor's estimate of the measure of guilt involved in omission, and in an irreligious state of the mind, as an exceedingly grave addition to the account of criminal action.
But, as he went up the river, the "Nashville" took the alarm and fled before him; and it seemed that the most the Union fleet could do would be to keep her from coming down again, for with her light draught she could keep well out of range of the monitor's guns.
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