Suddenly, with tremendous voice, and awful uproar of the sea, the magazine explodes.
Columns of water toss high in air, mingled with the oaken ribs that held the powder but a minute ago.
Consternation seizes British troops on Long Island. The brave soldiers on the parapet at Governor’s Island quake with fear. All New York rushes to the river-side to find out what it can mean. Nothing, on all the face of the earth, ever happened like it before, one and all declare.
Opinion varies concerning it, from bomb to earthquake, from meteor to water-spout, and settles down on neither.
Poor Ezra Lee feels that he meant well, but did not act wisely. David Bushnell praises the sergeant, and takes all the want of success to himself, in not going to do his own work.
Meanwhile, with astonishment, Generals Washington and Putnam and David Bushnell himself behold, as did the Provincials, after the battle of Bunker-Breed’s Hill, victory in defeat, for lo! no British ship sails up the East River, or appears to bombard New York.
Silently they weigh anchor and drop down the bay. The little American Turtle gained a bloodless victory that day.
Note.—The writer has carefully followed, in the account of the Turtle’s attempt upon the Eagle, the statement of Ezra Lee, made to Mr. Charles Griswold of Lyme, more than forty years after the occurrence, and by him communicated to the American Journal of Science and Arts in 1820. For the description of the wonderful mechanism of the machine, the account given at the time by Dr. Gale in his letters to Silas Deane has been chosen, as probably more accurate than one made from memory after forty years had passed.