The sea was bare between them and the forts, except for a rent ruin hanging on the Outer Brewster where a shattered destroyer was aground. Off Cohasset lay another, sprawling on the rocks called The Grampuses, half out of the sea as if it were the torn body of a weird monster that had thrown itself ashore in a dying agony. “No damage,” said Fort Revere. “No damage, except dismounted searchlight,” said Fort Strong. “One 6-inch gun dismantled,” said Standish. “No damage,” reported Andrews and Banks. In Fort Warren two 3-inch quick firers were destroyed. “We could hold them off forever,” said the battle commander, “if we were protected from the land.” _It Was His Last Fight_ The successful fight of his defenses had made it only the more bitter for him. He knew that this was the last fight. He knew that the army that was sweeping northward would take him in the back before night. He looked at one of his 12-inch rifles. He walked over to it and patted the beautiful thing, so shapely, so graceful that it seemed impossible that it should weigh 35 tons. “If they had just given you that little extra elevation!” he murmured. “Then yonder ships wouldn’t dare lie within 20,000 yards of us.”[101] But “they” had not given the rifles that little extra elevation. “They” had found time enough and money enough to pay for bridges over muddy creeks, for printing millions of words of oratory, for hundreds of private bills. “They” had been able to find money to pay themselves for constructive recesses of Congress, and mileage for journeys that they had not made. But they had not been able to find money for defense. Just a little foresight, and Boston, that now was trembling, might be sitting behind that charmed circle of its great guns and laughing at all the navies of the world. Haggard and pale, Boston’s people looked toward the sea and the dawn. The sullen thunders still rolled out there, but slowly now, and far off. The fleet was using only its heaviest guns, and firing deliberately, though steadily. Having failed to destroy the effectiveness of the defenses, it would content itself with long range fire, simply to wear the defenders out till the army should arrive. All night long Boston people, moved to unendurable terror by the bombardment, had tried to flee from the city. All night long other crowds had tried to enter it. On all the roads these opposing crowds had met and jostled. _Opposing Streams of Fugitives_ They warned each other, and tried to turn each other back. Shells were falling into Boston town, said the people who were fleeing from the city. Crazed by fear, they invented the most monstrous tales and believed them.