In fact, the thing
looked altogether too safe; though it may not prove quite an agreeable
predicament to be thus boxed up in impenetrable iron, with the
possibility, one would imagine, of being sent to the bottom of the sea,
and, even there, not drowned, but stifled. Nothing, however, can exceed
the confidence of the officers in this new craft. It was pleasant to see
their benign exultation in her powers of mischief, and the delight with
which they exhibited the circumvolutory movement of the tower, the quick
thrusting forth of the immense guns to deliver their ponderous missiles,
and then the immediate recoil, and the security behind the closed
port-holes. Yet even this will not long be the last and most terrible
improvement in the science of war. Already we hear of vessels the
armament of which is to act entirely beneath the surface of the water; so
that, with no other external symptoms than a great bubbling and foaming,
and gush of smoke, and belch of smothered thunder out of the yeasty
waves, there shall be a deadly fight going on below,--and, by and by, a
sucking whirlpool, as one of the ships goes down.
The Monitor was certainly an object of great interest; but on our way to
Newport News, whither we next went, we saw a spectacle that affected us
with far profounder emotion.
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