It struck Tombs that he had sailed into an erupting volcano.

The Texas had now passed the Brooklyn and gave it a parting shot from the stern pivot that passed so close to Admiral Porter that its air suction caused him to temporarily lose his breath. He was fighting mad at the rebel ironclad’s ease of deflecting the broadside the Brooklyn threw at her.

“Signal the fleet to encircle and ram her!” he ordered Captain Alden.

Alden complied, but he knew it was a long shot. Every officer was stunned by the ironclad’s incredible speed. “She’s going awfully fast for one of our ships to hit her squarely,” he said bleakly.

“I want that damned rebel sunk!” snarled Porter.

“If by a miracle she gets past us, she’ll never escape the forts and the New Ironsides, ” Alden soothed his superior.

As if to punctuate his statement, the monitors opened up as the Texas passed free of the Brooklyn and broke into the open ahead of the next frigate in line, the Colorado.

The Texas was being swept by a screaming bedlam of death. The Union gunners were becoming more accurate. A pair of heavy solid shot struck just aft of the starboard gun with a tremendous blow. Smoke burst inside the casemate as 38 inches of iron, wood, and cotton were crushed 4 feet inward. Another shot pounded a massive crater below the smokestack, followed by a shell that struck in exactly the same place, breaching the already damaged armor and exploding inside the gun deck with terrible effect, killing six and wounding eleven men and setting the shredded cotton and shredded wood on fire.

“Hells bells!” Craven roared, finding himself standing alone amid a pile of bodies, his hair singed, clothes torn, and his left arm broken. “Grab that hose from the engine room and put out this damned fire”

Chief Engineer O’Hare stuck his head up through the engine room hatch. His face was black from coal dust and. streaked with sweat. “How bad is it?” he asked in a surprisingly calm voice.

“You don’t want to know,” Craven yelled at him. “Just keep the engines turning,”

“Not easy. My men are dropping from the heat. It’s hotter than hell down here.”

“Consider it good practice for when we all get there,” Craven snapped back.

Then another great fist of a shell smacked the casemate with a huge, deafening explosion that shook the Texas to her keel. It was not one explosion but two, so simultaneous as to be indistinguishable. The forward port corner of the casemate was chopped open as if by a giant meat cleaver. Massive chunks of iron and wood were twisted and splintered in a blast that cut down the crew of the forward Blakely gun.

Another shell sheared its way through the armor and exploded in the ship’s hospital, killing the surgeon and half the wounded waiting to be tended. The gun deck now looked like a slaughterhouse. The once immaculate deck was blackened from powder and crimson with blood.