"The battle had now fairly commenced, and the guns were worked with fearful rapidity. It was one constant peal of thunder, and to the spectators in Charleston, that low spot, across the bay, looked like a volcano breaking forth from the sea. Lee stood on Haddrell's point, watching the effect of the first fire. When the smoke lifted, like the folds of a vast curtain, he expected to see that 'slaughter-pen' in fragments; but there still floated the flag of freedom, and beneath it beat brave hearts, to whom that awful cannonade was but 'a symphony to the grand march of independence.' When the fight had fairly begun, they thought no more of those heavy guns than they did of their rifles. Their coats were hastily flung one side, and their hats with them--and in their shirt-sleeves, with handkerchiefs about their heads, they toiled away under the sweltering sun with the coolness and courage of old soldiers. The fire from those nine vessels, with their cannon all trained upon that pile of logs, was terrific, and it trembled like a frightened thing under the shock; but the good palmettoes closed silently over the balls, as they buried themselves in the timber and sand, and the work went bravely on. Thus, hour after hour, did it blaze, and flame, and thunder there on the sea, while the shots of the Americans told with murderous effect. At every discharge, those vessels shook as if smitten by a rock--the planks were ripped up, the splinters hurled through the air, and the decks strewed with mangled forms. Amid the smoke, bombs were seen traversing the air, and dropping, in an incessant shower, within the fort--but a morass in the middle swallowed them up as fast as they fell. At length, riddled through and through, her beds of mortar broken up, the bomb-vessel ceased firing. Leaving the smaller vessels, as unworthy of his attention, Moultrie trained his guns upon the larger ones, and 'Look to the Commodore! look to the fifty-gun ship!' passed along the lines, and they _did_ look to the Commodore in good earnest, sweeping her decks at every discharge with such fatal fire, that at one time there was scarcely a man left upon the quarter-deck. The Experiment, too, came in for her share of consideration--her decks were slippery with blood, and nearly a hundred of her men were borne below, either killed or wounded. Nor were the enemy idle, but rained back a perfect tempest of balls; but that brave garrison had got used to the music of cannon, and the men, begrimed with powder and smoke, shot with the precision and steadiness they would have done in firing at a target. As a heavy ball, in full sweep, touched the top of the works, it took one of the coats, lying upon the logs, and lodged it in a tree. 'See that coat! see that coat!' burst in a laugh on every side, as if it had been a mere plaything that had whistled past their heads. Moultrie, after a while, took out his pipe, and lighting it, leaned against the logs,