“If you please, sir,” said he, with the air of one making a great discovery, “I don’t believe Captain Somers wants to see any signal.”
“You are right, my boy!” cried “Old Pepper,” who was in high good humor over the gallant behavior of his “schoolboy captains;” “but, at least, he shall be supported.”
With that he gave orders, and the ship, advancing slowly but as steadily as if working into the roadstead of a friendly port, delivered a tremendous fire upon the batteries that were now trying to get the range of the daring little boat.
In spite of Somers’s efforts to keep from drifting too far toward the reefs and the reserve squadron by backing his sweeps astern, he soon found himself directly under the guns of one of the larger forts. The Constitution was thundering at the forts, but this one was a little too near, and her shot fell over it. The situation of Somers was now desperate, but his indomitable coolness stood him in good stead.
“If we can knock down the platform that holds those guns, my men, we shall be all right,” he cried, “and see, it is very rickety!”
Then, ordering a double charge put in the long gun, he sighted it himself. A shot went screaming over the water, and immediately a cloud of dust, bricks, and mortar showed that it had struck the right spot. The platform was destroyed, and the battery tumbled down among the ruins.
Somers then turned his attention to the five gunboats, that he could now drive still closer to the reef, and on which every shot was telling. At this moment Moriarity whispered anxiously in Somers’s ear:
“For the love of Heaven, sorr, don’t look toward the flagship! They’re flyin’ a signal as you’d be mighty onwillin’ to see, sorr.”
“Thank you, Moriarity,” answered Somers, smiling, who knew that the coxswain meant that the signal of recall had been sent up—this time in earnest. But, feared as Commodore Preble was by his young captains, he could not make them retire under the fire of an enemy.
“Look at Decatur over there!” cried Somers, pointing to the southern entrance to the reef, where there was heavy firing and a terrible struggle going on. “If we leave these gunboats, they will at once re-enforce their windward division; and Decatur already has as much on his hands as he can manage.”