So far the fog was kind to the defenders. But the invader, too, was quick to seize its favor.
_The Fishermen Who Caught More Than Lobsters_
Long before, half a dozen men, dressed like fishermen, had made their way out of Narragansett Harbor in a small sloop, and had reported at the enemy headquarters. For a month or more past they had been fishing for lobsters; but they had caught more than lobsters. Their catch lay on the table in the Commander’s tent, in the form of charts with soundings and range lines and distances. They were maps of the mine fields.
As soon as the fog began, these men went aboard a mine-sweeper. It steamed eastward, followed by the others. The sweepers had more than the cables and grapples that make a mine-sweeper’s outfit. Set in rows on the after-deck of each vessel were bulging mines, filled with 300 pounds of trinitrotol.[58]
The fog became so thick that it was hard to say if it were daylight still, or night. Night could only make it more black. It could not increase the obscurity.
In the coast defenses of Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay every man was straining eyes and ears and nerves. Every gun company was at its weapon. Every gun was loaded. Tall projectiles stood ready with the chains and grapples of the hoists prepared. Men stood waiting in the powder magazines under the batteries.
Nothing to see or hear at Fort Wright on Fisher’s Island. Nothing at Fort Michie on Gull Island. Nothing at Fort Terry on Plum Island. On all the shrouded, swift tide-ways that led into Long Island Sound there was nothing.
There was nothing in front of the Narragansett defenses that eyes could see or ears could hear. Nothing--and then, far out, it was as if a sea-monster had arisen in dying torment, and lashed, and spouted and screamed. Before the riven column of water could fall, there came muffled, thundering explosion under water--one, two, three!
The defenses split the fog with fire. Their mine-protecting batteries had been trained over the fields long since. There was no need for aim. Instantly they swept the hidden sea with shells that would clear twenty acres of water.
Again there was silence and blindness--the unearthly silence of the Atlantic sea-fog. It lay for half an hour, as if there were no such thing as war in the world.