Meanwhile the squadron had been busy preparing for the great ordeal. The first task was to break the boom across the river. This boom was placed so as to hold the ships under the fire of the forts; and the four-knot spring current was so strong that the eight-knot ships could not make way enough against it to cut clear through with certainty. Moreover, the middle of the boom was filled in by eight big schooners, chained together, with their masts and rigging dragging astern so as to form a most awkward entanglement. Farragut's fleet captain, Henry H. Bell, taking two gunboats, _Itasca_ and _Pinola_, under Lieutenants Caldwell and Crosby, slipped the chains of one schooner; whereupon this schooner and the _Itasca_ swung back and grounded under fire of the forts. The _Pinola_ gallantly stood by, helping _Itasca_ clear. Then Caldwell, with splendid audacity and skill, steamed up through the narrow gap, turned round, put on the _Itasca's_ utmost speed, and, with the current in his favor, charged full tilt against the chains that still held fast. For one breathless moment the little _Itasca_ seemed lost. Her bows rose clear out, as, quivering from stem to stern, she was suddenly brought up short from top speed to nothing. But, in another fateful minute, with a rending crash, the two nearest schooners gave way and swept back like a gate, while the _Itasca_ herself shot clear and came down in triumph to the fleet. The passage was made on the twenty-fourth, in line-ahead (that is, one after another) because Farragut found the opening narrower than he thought it should be for two columns abreast, at night, under fire, and against the spring current. Owing to the configuration of the channel the starboard column had to weigh first, which gave the lead to the 500-ton gunboat _Cayuga_. This was the one weak point, because the leading vessel, drawing most fire, should have been the strongest. The fault was Farragut's; for his heart got the better of his head when it came to placing Captain Theodorus Bailey, his dauntless second-in-command, on board a vessel fit to lead the starboard column. He could not bear to obscure any captain's chances of distinction by putting another captain over him. So Bailey was sent to the best vessel commanded by a lieutenant. The _Cayuga's_ navigating officer, finding that the guns of the forts were all trained on midstream, edged in towards Fort St. Philip. His masts were shot to pieces, but his hull drew clear without great damage. "Then," he says, "I looked back for some of our vessels; and my heart jumped up into my mouth when I found I could not see a single one. I thought they must all have been sunk by the forts." But not a ship had gone down. The three big ones of the starboard column--_Pensacola, Mississippi_, and _Oneida_--closed with the fort (so that the gunners on both sides exchanged jeers of defiance) and kept up a furious fire till the lighter craft astern slipped past safely and joined the _Cayuga_ above.