“The Confederate States steamer _Palmetto State_,” and he emphasized the answer with a shell that killed one man, cut through the condenser and the steam-drum above one of the _Mercedita’s_ boilers, and then exploded just short of the further side of the steamer, tearing a great hole in her side near the water-line. The shot and escaping steam killed four, and as many more were scalded. They were at the mercy of the ironclad, and they believed the ship was sinking. When the Confederates demanded that the _Mercedita_ surrender, Lieut. T. Abbott was sent in a small boat to the _Palmetto State_, where he gave a parole for all the members of his crew. This done, Commodore Ingraham left the _Mercedita_ alone, and went hunting other blockaders. Meantime the _Chicora_ found the _Keystone State_, Capt. William E. LeRoy. A shell was fired at the _Chicora_, Capt. J. R. Tucker, and the Confederates returned it with a shot that set the _Keystone State_ on fire, and she steered away in the fog to escape until she had extinguished the fire, when she turned toward a black smoke, intending to ram the vessel making it. It proved to be a Confederate ship cruising in the fog for blockaders, but the _Keystone State_ failed to ram her. Worse yet, the Confederate projectiles cut the _Keystone State’s_ steam-pipes and pierced her below the water-line. It was an ironclad against a frail merchant ship, and there could be but one result. The merchant ship surrendered. She had lost twenty killed and as many wounded before she did so. [Illustration: GENERAL MAP OF CHARLESTON HARBOR, SOUTH CAROLINA. Showing Confederate Defences and Obstructions. ARMAMENT OF REBEL FORTS. FEBRUARY 18, 1865.] Meantime the _Palmetto_, Commodore Ingraham, had been cruising about and exchanging shots with some other ships of the blockading squadron, but they being of superior speed, easily avoided her, according to the Confederate accounts. The Union reports say that the _Unadilla_ and _Housatonic_ came to attack her instead of running. In any event, the two Confederates had accomplished everything possible in compelling the surrender of the two Union ships. They could not even take the surrendered ships into port. “I knew that our only opportunity was to take the enemy unawares, as the moment he was under way, from his superior speed, we could not close with him,” says Ingraham in his report. He therefore “led the way to the beach channel.” He did not make any attempt to carry either of the surrendered vessels with him. The two Confederate ships started for home at 7.30, according to Tucker’s official report, “leaving the partially crippled and fleeing enemy about _seven miles clear of the bar_, standing to the southward and eastward.”