Page:Studies in Irish History, 1649-1775 (1903).djvu/235

Derry and Limerick The Dartmouth frigate engaged the fort at close range, while, covered by her guns, two small store ships—the Mountjoy and the Phœnix—slipped by, delivering their broadsides as they passed.

As the two ships were seen to emerge from the smoke of the cannonade, murmurs ran along the walls of Derry, and from all quarters of the city a ghastly crowd came tottering to the ramparts. In silence they gaped, while down the river the Irish musketry crackled, and the guns, dragged from place to place along the banks, harassed the ships. They steadily replied, drifting slowly up the narrow channel, for the wind had dropped.

The Mountjoy first reached the boom. She struck it, quivered, and ran aground; shouts of triumph rose along the Irish lines; and she was lost to view in the smoke of the batteries and her own answering broadsides. The Swallow's longboat had come up with the ships, barricaded, so that to the Irish it looked like "a boat with a house on it." Now, heedless of the heavy fire, her crew plied axe and cutlass vigorously upon the boom, which by this time must have been much damaged by the action of the water. The Irish prepared boats to board the stranded vessel, but the rising tide and the recoil from a broad- 223