The red sun sank behind the sand hills, and the silence was welcomed. During the heavy cannonade,--like the Union soldiers who, obedient to the hunter's instinct, stopped in the midst of a Wilderness battle to shoot rabbits,--a Confederate gunner had trained his rifled cannon upon the three non-combatant vessels, the _Bibb_, the _Ben Deford_, and the _Nantasket_, which lay in the North Channel at a respectful distance, but quite within easy range of Sullivan's Island. Having fired a half a dozen shot which had fallen unnoticed, the gunner demoralized the little squadron, and sent hundreds of interested spectators running, jumping, and rolling below deck, by sending a shot transversely across the _Nantasket_. It dropped in the sea about a hundred yards from the bow of the _Ben Deford_. Another shot in admirable line fell short. Shells from Cummings Point had also been tried on the ships laden with civilians, but had failed to reach them. However, the correspondents claim to have silenced the batteries,--by getting out of the way; for in a few minutes the cables had been hauled in, paddle-wheels set in motion, and distance increased from the muzzles of the battery. When the fleet returned, Carleton leaped on board of the slush deck of the monitor _Catskill_, receiving hearty response from Captain George Rodgers, who reported "All right, nobody hurt, ready for them again." I afterwards saw all these monitors covered with indentations like spinning-top moulds or saucers. They were gouged, dented, and bruised by case-shot that had struck and glanced sidewise. Here and there, it looked as though an adamantine serpent had grooved its way over the convex iron surface, as a worm leaves the mark of its crawling in the soft earth under the stone. The _Catskill_ had received thirty shots, the _Keokuk_ a hundred. Inside of the _Nahant_, Carleton found eleven officers and men badly contused by the flying of bolt-heads in the turret; but, except from a temporary jam, her armor was intact. On the _Patapsco_ a ball had ripped up the plating and pierced the work beneath. This was the only shot that had penetrated any of the monitors. The _Weehawken_ had in one place the pittings of three shots which, had they immediately followed each other, might, like the arrows of the Earl of Douglas in Scott's "Lady of the Lake," split each other in twain. Except leaving war's honorable scar, these three bolts hurt not the _Weehawken_. Out of probably three thousand projectiles shot from behind walls, about three hundred and fifty took effect, that is, one shot out of six. Three tons of iron were hurled at Fort Sumter, and probably six tons at the fleet. Fighting inside of iron towers, the Union men had no one killed, and but one mortally wounded. The _Keokuk_, the most vulnerable of all the ships engaged, sank under the northwest wind in the heavy sea of the next day.