By these devices the torpedo-boat was unable to get near the _Argus_, while the netting, anchored to the bottom of the harbour, prevented any probability of the torpedo being fired under the vessel. The Government had practically said to Fulton, “Do your best, and we’ll do our best to defeat you.” The experiment was not one-sided, as are so many. Fulton, far from complaining, thus wrote: “I will do justice to the talents of Commodore Rodgers. The nets, booms, kentledge, and grapnels which he arranged around the _Argus_ made a formidable appearance against one torpedo-boat and eight bad oarsmen. I was taken unawares. I had explained to the officers of the navy my means of attack; they did not inform me of their means of defence. The nets were put down to the ground, otherwise I should have sent the torpedoes under them. In this situation, the means with which I was provided being imperfect, insignificant, and inadequate to the effect to be produced, I might be compared to what the inventor of gunpowder would have appeared had he lived in the time of Julius Cæsar, and presented himself before the gates of Rome with a four-pounder, and had endeavoured to convince the Roman people that by means of such machines he could batter down their walls. They would have told him that a few catapultas casting arrows and stones upon his men would cause them to retreat; that a shower of rain would destroy his ill-guarded powder; and the Roman centurions, who would have been unable to conceive the various modes in which gunpowder has since been used to destroy the then art of war, would very naturally conclude that it was a useless invention; while the manufacturers of catapultas, bows, arrows, and shields would be the most vehement against further experiments.” [Illustration: LIEUT. CUSHING’S ATTACK ON THE “ALBEMARLE.”]