Part 66 (2/2)

For two solid hours the iron-clads pounded and hammered each other. The shots made no impression on either boat.

Again the _Merrimac_ tried to ram her antagonist and run her aground.

The nimble foe avoided the blow, though struck a grinding, crus.h.i.+ng side-swipe.

The little _Monitor_ now stuck her nose squarely against the side of the _Merrimac_, held it there, and fired both her eleven-inch guns against the walls of the Southerner.

The charge of powder was not heavy enough. No harm was done. The impact of the shots had merely forced the sloping sides an inch or two.

The captain of the _Merrimac_ turned to his men in sharp command.

”All hands on deck. Board and capture her!”

The smoke-smeared crew swarmed to the portholes and were just in the act of springing on the decks of the _Monitor_, when she backed quickly and dropped down stream.

After six hours of thunder in each other's faces the _Monitor_ drew away into the shoal waters guarding the _Minnesota_.

The _Merrimac_ could not follow her in the shallows and at two o'clock turned her prow again toward Sewell's Point.

The battle was a drawn conflict. But the plucky little _Monitor_ had won a tremendous moral victory. She had rescued the navy in the nick of time. The Government at Was.h.i.+ngton once more breathed.

From the heights of rejoicing the South sank again to the bitterness of failure. For twenty-four hours her flag had been mistress of the seas.

Jefferson Davis saw the hope of peace fade into the certainty of a struggle for the possession of Richmond.

The way had been cleared. McClellan's two hundred thousand men were rus.h.i.+ng on their transports for the Virginia peninsula.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SNARE OF THE FOWLER

Long before Jennie Barton arrived in Richmond Socola had waked to the realization of the fact that he had been caught in the trap he had set for another. He had laughed at his growing interest in the slender dark little Southerner. He imagined that he had hypnotized himself into the idea that he really liked her. He had kept no account of the number of visits he had made. They were part of his programme. They had grown so swiftly into the habit of his thought and life he had not stopped to question the motive that prompted his zeal in pressing his attentions.

In fact his mind had become so evenly adjusted to hers, his happiness had been so quietly perfect, he had lost sight of the fact that he was pressing his attentions at all.

The day she was suddenly called South and he said good-by with her brown eyes looking so frankly into his he was brought sharply up against the fact that he was in love.

When he took her warm hand in his to press it for the last time, he felt an almost resistless impulse to bend and kiss her. From that moment he realized that he was in love--madly, hopelessly, desperately.

He had left the car and hurried back to his post in the State Department, his heart beating like a trip hammer. It was a novel experience. He had never taken girls seriously before. The last girl on earth he had ever meant to take seriously was this slip of a Southern enthusiast. For a moment he was furious at the certainty of his abject surrender. He lifted his eyes to the big columns of the Confederate Capitol and laughed:

”Come, come, man--common sense--this is a joke! Forget it all. To your work--your country calls!”

Somehow the country refused to issue but one call--the old eternal cry of love. Wherever he turned, Jennie's brown eyes were smiling into his.

He looked at the Confederate Capitol to inspire him to deeds of daring and all he could remember was that she was a glorious little rebel with three brothers fighting for the flag that floated there. All he could get out of the supreme emblem of the ”Rebellion” was that it was her Capitol and _her_ flag and he loved her.

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