They were not left long in uncertainty. Swinging slowly around, the huge ironclad, after pausing a few minutes as though to take breath, came down the channel heading straight for the Minnesota. Her day's work was evidently not yet done. She must have another victim before returning to her moorings.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GREAT NAVAL COMBAT.
When Terry saw the ugly black ironclad bearing down upon the Minnesota, he could not suppress a cry of consternation.
"Oh, whirra! whirra!" he burst forth, dancing from one foot to the other, and swinging his arms about in the extremity of his excitement, "the murderin' thing is coming right for us, and it's smashing us to bits entirely she'll be."
That the captain of the frigate held the same opinion, however differently he might have expressed it, was soon manifest from the manoeuvring of his ship; for instead of remaining out in the north channel, where there was sufficient depth of water for the Merrimac to move freely, he turned his vessel's bow seaward, and kept on in that direction until she had grounded on a shoal about midway between Fortress Monroe and Newport News Point.
All danger from the irresistible ram was now over, as the ironclad could not approach within some hundreds of yards without getting aground herself, which would have put an end to her career; so those on board the Minnesota began to pluck up courage again. Even Terry felt more composed when he realized that the "murderin' thing," as he called it, had to keep a respectful distance.
But they were not permitted to enjoy this little bit of comfort long. The big frigate, towering high above the water, offered only too easy a target to the rifled guns of the Merrimac, and presently their destructive missiles began to come crashing through her wooden sides as though they had been paper, inflicting fearful damage and slaughter.
Yet nothing daunted by the immediate presence of danger and death, the men of the Minnesota plied their own formidable battery; and although the cannon-balls' bounced harmlessly off the impregnable sides of the ironclad, they did their work against her attendant gunboats, so that both had ere long to retire from the combat.