Such a night of anxiety and alarm the Northern States had never experienced. It was ten o’clock at night when the look-out in the garrison thought he saw lights out at sea in Chesapeake Bay. He called his mate. By-and-by they made them out to be two small steamers heading for Old Point Comfort. An eye-witness from Fort Monroe thus describes what happened: “Oh, what a night that was! I can never forget it. There was no fear during the long hours--danger, I find, does not bring that--but there was a longing for some interposition of God and waiting upon Him, from whom we felt our help must come, in earnest, fervent prayer, while not neglecting all the means of martial defence. Fugitives from Newport News kept arriving. Ladies and children had walked the long ten miles from Newport News, feeling that their presence only embarrassed their brave husbands. Sailors from the _Congress_ and _Cumberland_ came, one of them with his ship’s flag bound about his waist, as he had swum with it ashore. Dusky fugitives came mournfully fleeing from a fate worse than death--slavery. These entered my cabin hungry and weary. The heavens were aflame with the burning _Congress_. But there were no soldiers among the flying host. The sailors came only to seek another chance at the enemy, since the _Cumberland_ had gone down in deep waters, and the _Congress_ had gone upward, as if a chariot of fire, to convey the manly souls whose bodies had perished in that conflict upward to heaven. “The heavy night hung dark the hills and waters o’er,” but the night was not half so heavy as our hearts, nor so dark as our prospects. All at once a speck of light gleamed on the distant wave. It moved; it came nearer and nearer, and at ten o’clock at night the _Monitor_ appeared. “‘When the tale of bricks is doubled, Moses comes!’ “I never more firmly believed in special Providence than at that hour. Even sceptics for the moment were converted, and said: ‘God has sent her!’ But how insignificant she looked! She was but a speck on the dark blue sea at night, almost a laughable object by day. The enemy call her ‘a cheese-box on a raft,’ and the comparison is a good one. Could she meet the _Merrimac_? The morrow must determine, for, under God, the _Monitor_ is our only hope now.”