The engagement was on, and I hardly realized that I was taking part in as cruel a sea-fight as was ever waged. Phil and I served the ammunition for Nos. 1 and 2 guns, and so rapidly did our people deliver their fire that we were kept on the jump every minute.
I saw the men throwing sand on the decks, and forgot to be frightened. I even understood how necessary it was, how greatly it might be to my advantage in the work, for a 24-pound shot had come through one of the midship ports, killing three men and wounding as many more, and the red blood with its odor of salt flowing across the planks where no sand had been strewn, caused me to slip and slide as if on greased timbers.
My shirt was covered with blood; my throat smarted with the fumes of burning powder, and my eyes were half blinded by the smoke. Here and there lay the body of a shipmate who would never again answer to the call of his superior; a wounded man had crawled against the forward bulkhead and was trying to stanch the flow of life fluid, and amid it all I had no consciousness of fear. The fever of battle was upon me like a consuming fire, and my only thought, outside of the duties I should perform, was that we might be mowing down as many of their men as they were of ours.
Now and then I saw Phil dimly through the smoke as he passed me going to and from the magazine. His shirt had been torn away, or flung off, and thus, half-clad, begrimed with powder until one might have mistaken him for an African, he cheered whenever we succeeded in firing a broadside, or waved his arms now and then in response to some command from the gunners.
Now I heard a shout from the hatchway that a spring had been got on the cable, and as we sent a broadside toward the Phœbe or the Cherub, as the case might be, I added my voice to the others, exulting in the thought that we had sent death aboard the cowardly Britishers.
Again I heard the cry that our springs had been cut away by a shot, and was sensible of the fact that the gallant old frigate was being swung around by the wind until the after gunners were forced to cease work because they could not bring their pieces to bear.
Three several times did our brave fellows, working under the enemy's heavy fire, succeed in getting the springs on the cable, and as often were the hawsers shot away.
"The Phœbe is punishing us terribly," so I heard Midshipman Farragut say; but through an open port I saw the Cherub running down to leeward to take a position near her consort. Surely, we had given that ship enough, although not succeeding in doing the frigate any great injury.
The Phœbe was so far away that we had hardly a gun which could touch her, while because of her station and long pieces, she sent nearly every shot aboard us.