Farragut, who had climbed into the port main rigging of the _Hartford_, where he could see over the smoke of battle, saw the _Tecumseh_ sink, and turning to Capt. J. Jouett, of the little _Metacomet_ alongside, asked him to send a boat to rescue some of the _Tecumseh’s_ crew. But Jouett had already ordered the boat away, and it carried another hero of that battle--Ensign H. C. Neilds. Neilds was only a lad, but he sat unmoved in the stern of the frail craft as it passed out from the shelter of his ship into the hurtling storm that ripped the water into a misty spray. A moment later he remembered that his flag was not flying, and standing up, as a Perry might have done, he unfurled the flag, set it to its staff in the face of friend and foe, and then sat down quietly to guide the boat on her mission. Over on the monitors was still another hero--Commander Stevens, of the _Winnebago_. He was of the old school of seamen, who believed that the captain’s place was on the quarter-deck. The double-turreted monitor had no quarter-deck, but Stevens, restive in the iron box, got out on the deck between the turrets, and pacing to and fro alone in the storm, gave his orders now to one turret and then another. And what was more, the monitors were all driving ahead in the wake of the lost _Tecumseh_--driving toward the torpedoes. But just then the captain of the _Brooklyn_, being in the lead of all, saw some little floats that marked the location of a nest of torpedoes, and first stopped and then backed his engines. It was not the right move for a ship in Farragut’s squadron to make, and it threw the line into confusion, and held the ships under the hottest fire of the fort--held the _Hartford_ in particular where the shot from the enemy turned her gun-deck into a slaughter pen so that blood ran in streams from her scuppers, and the splinters of her walls and bits of flesh and clothing from the dead were scattered in a shower over the deck of the gunboat lashed alongside. As the _Hartford_ ranged up near the _Brooklyn_, Farragut, from his perch in the rigging, asked what was the trouble, and the one word “torpedoes” came back to him. “D----n the torpedoes! Follow me,” said the admiral, and as the _Hartford_ took the lead of her column, he signalled for “close order.” A moment more, and the _Hartford_ had reached the torpedo nest. The torpedo cases were distinctly heard striking against her bottom, and their primers were heard snapping, but not one exploded. It was at this time that Captain Drayton, of the _Hartford_, seeing Farragut clinging to the shrouds just under the maintop, sent a sailor up to make fast a slender rope from one shroud to another in such a way that the admiral could not fall in case he was struck. It is so far literally true that Farragut was “lashed to the mast.” [Illustration: Fort Gaines. U. S. Fleet. _Hartford._ Monitors. _Tennessee._ Fort Morgan. Battle of Mobile Bay. _Front a painting by Admiral Walke._]