Chapter 26:
- A woman's Discoveries. -- a n infernal machine. -- the shipping in danger. -- discovery and destruction of the submarine battery.
The destiny of nations, history tells us, sometimes turns upon the most trivial things. Rome was once saved by the gabbling of a flock of geese, whose cries awoke a sentinel sleeping at his post, just in time to give the alarm and enable the Roman soldiers to successfully repel the attack of an invading foe. A certain exiled and fugitive king took courage from watching a spider build its web, recovered his kingdom, and a crown that had been wrested from him by the misfortune of war. Darius, made King of Persia by the neighing of a horse-and in our own day historians agree, that had it not been for the opportune appearance of the “Monitor” when the rebel iron-clad “Merrimac” steamed out of Hampton Roads in March, 1862, the destruction of the Union might have been an accomplished fact. For had not that formidable battery met her match in the “Yankee cheese-box,” as the “Monitor” was derisively called, she might have cleared the water of Union sloops of war, raised the blockade, opened