A GUN-BOAT went aground one night in an inlet off Chisholm’s Island, near Port Royal, South Carolina.
As soon as the news came to us, we set out to attack her.
We marched all night, and in the early gray of the dawn we reached the palmetto-studded island. The gun-boat had, in the meantime, got off the bar on the high tide, and was riding quietly at anchor, four hundred yards from the nearest available point on the shore.
I had command of two field pieces. Captain Elliot, the chief of artillery, ordered me to inspect the vessel and “act according to circumstances.” He said: “If you find her too strong to be attacked with field guns, retire quietly across the island. If you find her not too strong, attack her, and I will send you any reinforcements necessary.”
I took Joe with me.
We crawled up to the brink of the stream, and took a good look in the gray morning light.
But that look didn’t tell either of us anything. Neither of us knew enough about naval architecture and armament to have the slightest idea whether the boat out there in the stream was formidable or otherwise.
“Well, what do you think, Joe?” I asked. “I don’t think,” he answered; “I don’t know anything about it; but my notion is that we’d better give her a shot or two, anyhow.”
“Well, the way I look at it,” said I, “is this: Elliot and those other fellows know, and we don’t. They’ll see her from some point of view. If they think her not formidable, and we don’t attack, they’ll blame us. If we attack, and she proves too formidable—well, we’ve got good horses and we can run. Order up the guns, Joe.”
A minute later we opened fire with two twelve pounders. By one of those freaks of extraordinarily good luck, which so often save men from disaster in war, our first shot severed the gun-boat’s rudder post. Our second shell passed through her boiler and exploded in her furnace; not only setting fire to her, but with the escaping steam driving the men from the gun decks. This left her with only one available gun—a swivel on the poop.