The sixth of February dawned clear, with just sufficient breeze to blow the smoke away. The flotilla steamed up the swollen Tennessee between the silent, densely wooded banks. Not a sound was heard ashore until, just after noon, Fort Henry came into view and answered the flagship's signal shot with a crashing discharge of all its big guns. Then the fire waxed hot and heavy on both sides, the gunboats knocking geyser-spouts of earth about the fort, and the fort knocking gigantic splinters out of the gunboats. The _Essex_ ironclad was doing very well when a big shot crashed into her middle boiler, which immediately burst like a shell, scalding the nearest men to death, burning others, and sending the rest flying overboard or aft. With both pilots dead and Commander W. D. Porter badly scalded, the _Essex_ was drifting out of action when the word went round that Fort Henry had surrendered: and there, sure enough, were the Confederate colors coming down. Instantly Porter rallied for the moment, called for three cheers, and fell back exhausted at the third. The Confederate General Tilghman surrendered to Foote with less than a hundred men, all the rest, over twenty-five hundred, having started towards Fort Donelson before the flag came down. The Western Flotilla had won the day alone. But it was the fear of Grant's approaching army that hurried the escaping garrison. An hour after the surrender Grant rode in and took command. That night victors and vanquished were dining together when a fussy staff officer came in to tell Grant that he could not find the Confederate reports. On this Captain Jesse Taylor, the chief Confederate staff officer, replied that he had destroyed them. The angry Federal then turned on him with the question, "Don't you know you've laid yourself open to punishment?" and was storming along, when Grant quietly broke in: "I should be very much surprised and mortified if one of my subordinate officers should allow information which he could destroy to fall into the hands of the enemy."