The ship was hopelessly lost. Indeed, she began to sink so soon as the torpedo exploded. The water poured into her vitals, and soon the crash of exploding boilers and the hiss of escaping steam added their quota to the confusion. Some of the cooler among the officers and men lingered on the decks, small arms in hand, searching the sea on every hand, until the decks were awash. They were looking and hoping for a chance at the boat which had caused them such a terrible disaster, but they never saw her. She had disappeared. Signals had been burned instantly on the shattered ship. Far up and down the line the lights of moving vessels burning answering signals showed that they were alert to render assistance. Boats, ships' cutters, dashed alongside to render help, and they, too, sought the torpedo boat, but in vain. She was not to be found. At the same time the ships of the fleet did not move from their appointed stations, and when the blockade-runners came dashing down through the Swash Channel in the hope that the vessels usually stationed there would be withdrawn in the excitement, they were met by a deadly fire from the rifled guns, which rendered it impossible for them to proceed. They turned tail and fled. Two of them succeeded in returning to the harbor. One of them never came back. She was set on fire and burned by the shells of the ships. The monitors and ironclads joined in the battle, the forts returned the fire, and the quiet night was filled with the noise of roaring cannon and exploding shell. Lacy's had been a gallant and heroic attempt. It had succeeded as to the blowing up of a Federal warship, but it had failed otherwise. By a singular freak of fortune the blow had not fallen upon the vessel for which it had been intended. After dark the fine new sloop-of-war _Housatonic_ had replaced the _Wabash_ off the Main Ship Channel, and she had suffered instead of the flagship. Although when day broke she was sought for again, nothing more was seen of the _David_. At least not then. With the explosion of the torpedo she had vanished from the face of the waters. For a long time General Beauregard and the people in Charleston waited for tidings of her, but it was not until the war was over and the _Housatonic_ was raised that the mystery was solved. They found the torpedo boat with her nose pointed toward the hole she had torn in the side of the ship, about a hundred feet away from the wrecked sloop-of-war. She had been riddled with bullets and shattered by the explosion of her own torpedo. She was, of course, filled with water, and in her, at their stations, they found the bodies of her devoted crew, Lacy with his hand on the wheel.