Her fire, however, was promptly replied to by Fort Fisher.

The shot from the fort's heavy artillery passed right over and close to the cruiser, and made her move further out, and thus spoiled the accuracy of the range of our devoted little craft, which the man-of-war had so correctly obtained.

We made a frantic effort to get off our sandy bed, and on all hands running from one extremity of the vessel to the other, to our delight she slipped off into deep water.
But our troubles were not yet over.

To get into the river's mouth it was necessary to make a _detour_, to do which we had to steer out towards the blockading fleet for a quarter of a mile before we could turn to go into the river.

While we were performing this somewhat ticklish manoeuvre, Fort Fisher most kindly opened a heavy fire from all its guns, and thus drew the attention of the blockaders from us.