Immediately “a red light was shown as a signal of danger,” and then the whole squadron except the _Water Witch_ slipped their cables and fled. “I ordered the _Preble_ and _Vincennes_ to proceed down the Southwest Pass,” says Pope, and “they did.” Meantime, “after the first blow given to this ship by the ram,” it “remained under our port quarter, apparently endeavoring to fix herself in a position to give us a second blow, but the slipping of our chain and the ship ranging ahead under steam frustrated the object.” That was Pope’s idea. The fact was that the ram’s machinery had not been properly stayed to sustain a shock, and the blow had entirely crippled the low-pressure engine, and left her with barely enough power to stem the current. She lay there making repairs, with her crew in a state of alarm lest she be disabled altogether. However, they got the high-pressure engine working independently, and then, to the great relief of her crew, she went creeping and coughing up the river, hugging the shoal water lest the _Richmond_ or _Water Witch_ pursue her after she had passed them. Both the _Richmond_ and the _Preble_ fired broadsides at her; the _Richmond_ fired three, “with what effect it was impossible to discover owing to the darkness,” but “some officers are of opinion they heard shot strike the ram.” As the ram disappeared up the river, the _Richmond’s_ “helm was put up, and the ship rapidly fell off, presenting her broadside up and down the river.” In that position they let her drift with the current to “cover the retreat” of the squadron. A squadron of four great ships, armed with forty-five first-class guns, had been driven into a shameful panic by one crippled tug carrying a gun that couldn’t be fired. At about this time a rocket was thrown up from the ram, and at once three lights were seen--“three large fire rafts, stretching across the river, were rapidly nearing us, while several _large_ steamers and a bark-rigged propeller were seen astern of them.” In the minds of the flying officers the peril was frightful. Nevertheless, as the _Richmond_ “drifted near the Passes ineffectual attempts were made to get her head upstream.” The attempts did not include the dropping of an anchor, because that would have stopped her in her flight for the sea. Pope was willing to head upstream provided he could keep travelling away from the fearsome ram and fire-rafts “stretching across the river.” When the “ineffectual attempts” were stopped “I found myself a mile and a half down the Southwest Pass.” “I then put the helm up, and continued down the river, hoping to be able to get her head around off Pilot Town. In doing this she drifted some distance below, grounding broadside on.”