So far from abandoning their forts under this fearful rain of metal and explosives the Confederates were busying themselves night and day in determined and intelligently directed efforts to destroy their adversary's fleet. They sent down the river a multitude of blazing fire-rafts, and it required not only all of Farragut's wonderful foresight and ingenuity but constant and very earnest exertions on the part of his crews to ward off this danger. At last the mortar experiment was done. It had utterly failed to accomplish its intended purpose of reducing the forts or compelling their evacuation. Farragut was dealing with an enemy of his own determined kind, an enemy as resolute, as daring, and as patiently enduring as he himself was. He decided at last to push his fleet past the forts at all hazards, and, leaving those works as an enemy in his rear, to try conclusions in a decisive battle with the Confederate fleet that lay in wait for him in the river above. It was a dangerous and a daring thing to do. Indeed, it was almost desperately daring. But Farragut's habit of mind was daring. Moreover his orders on this occasion offensively and insultingly "required" success at his hands. It was his fixed purpose either to achieve that success or to sink beneath the muddy waters of the Mississippi in a determined effort to achieve it. His first care was to sever the chain barrier across the river. To that end he sent a force up the stream which gallantly boarded one of the hulks, cut the chain, and rendered that defense useless. On the morning of April 24, at 3.30 o'clock, the fighting part of the fleet advanced in full force, engaging the enemy to the right and left, but meanwhile pushing its way up the river without waiting for results at the point of obstruction. The forts were quickly passed and then ensued one of the most picturesque water battles ever fought. The Confederates knew their business and they did it with a skill and determination which excited Farragut's admiration, as he was afterwards accustomed to testify in glowing words of recognition. Captain Theodorus Bailey, with eight vessels, was the first to pass the forts. He immediately became involved in a desperate encounter with the Confederate fleet. His flagship, the _Cayuga_, was engaged at once by three Confederate vessels, each determinedly trying to board and capture her; for this was a battle of giants in which every officer and every man on either side was ready for any conceivable deed of "derring-do," and in which personal courage of the most dauntless sort was the one military equipment which both sides possessed in absolutely limitless supply.