For a moment Cushing thought to land, walk boldly on board, and strive to carry her out into the stream. But even as the thought came to him he was discovered by the sentinels on shore, and a hail was heard. “Boat ahoy!” followed almost instantly by a musket-shot, and then by a rattling fire from an uncounted line of sentinels up and down the shore and on the ship. A huge bonfire of fat pine knots blazed up to illuminate the shore, and the call of the ship’s crew to quarters arose on the air. To the mind of any other man than a Cushing the expedition was a failure, but casting off the cutter with orders to pull for life, Cushing turned his launch out into the stream, swung her around in a wide circle to give her full speed, and then headed straight at the log-boom abreast of the fated ram. A host of Confederates gathered on the ram’s deck to beat him off. Two howitzers loaded with canister, and a score of muskets, were fired at him, and a man by his side fell, but Cushing with his own well-aimed howitzer scattered the Confederate host. And then the sled-runner bow of the launch struck the half-submerged boom, rose with the impetus, and over she went with her bow half under water, but inside the boom. The muzzle of a hundred-pounder was shoved out through the _Albemarle’s_ broadside port, directly in front of the launch, but Cushing drove the torpedo under the hull of the ironclad, raised it up until he felt it strike her bottom, and then, as the Confederates fired their big gun, he pulled the trigger. A dull roar from beneath the ship answered to the crash of the broadside gun. The charge of the gun flew over the heads of the launch’s crew, but the torpedo opened wide the hull of the _Albemarle_, and down she went. [Illustration: Cushing Blowing up the _Albemarle_.] The huge wave thrown up by the torpedo swept over the bow of the little launch, and she, too, sank. Even then the fortitude and resourcefulness of Cushing preserved him. Plunging into the river, he swam away unhurt and reached the swampy shore below, utterly exhausted. There he lay in the water until day was breaking, when he crawled into the woods and hid himself. While lying there he heard two men talking as they walked in an alongshore path, and learned how complete had been his work. During the day he found one of the enemy’s picket-boats, and that night he paddled his way off to the _Valley City_, where he arrived at 11 o’clock at night.