Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/51

 the fleet of the delay of action, from day to day, by the freaks of the weather. The strain of nerves by the expected conflict itself can scarcely be more trying than the torture of suspense. May the next twenty-four hours bring us relief from the tantalization of expectation!

April 6, 9 A.M.

A quiet atmosphere and lulled sea greeted me at daybreak upon the quarter-deck of the Bibb. All signs augured for a commemoration of the anniversary of the battle of Shiloh by the opening of our guns upon Fort Sumter. About 7 A.M. I took leave of my kind hosts of the Bibb, and in a few minutes stood upon the spardeck of the New-Ironsides. Admiral Dupont with his staff, comprising Fleet Captain C. R. P. Rodgers; Lieutenant A. S. Mackenzie, Ordnance Officer; Flag-Lieutenant S. W. Preston; Ensign M. L. Johnson, Aide-de-camp and Signal Officer; and Mr. A. McKenly, Secretary, had boarded the ship from the James Adger early in the morning. Duty did not absolutely require the presence of the Admiral on one of the ironclads, but a chivalric sympathy with his subordinates appeared to impel him to share the dangers of the fearful ordeal through which they were about passing.

One could not help beholding the Ironsides with a sensation of awe rather than admiration. The sense of the beautiful was not touched either by symmetry or elegance of form or neatness of general appointment. But she looked the fighting craft — the machine of destruction — all over. Outwardly and inwardly, her every visible inch revealed her devotion to war and to war alone. With her body stripped of the last vestige of spars and rigging, her sides discolored with slush and yawning with monstrous guns, she impressed one like a fit head and leader of the turreted nondescripts around her. Her deck, in addition to its iron plating, was protected with untanned hides aft, and a layer of sand-bags forward. To provide against penetration by shot or shell of her unarmored bow and stern, barricades of sand-bags from three to four feet thick, and rising from deck to deck, had been piled up on the gun and powder-decks. They filled the cabins and deprived the officers of their use. The furniture was stowed away below. To increase the resistance of the sand by moisture, a steady stream of water that flooded the cabins was poured from hose upon the bags. Upon the gun-deck the 11-inch Dahlgrens and 200-pound Parrotts shone