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lashing they gave the fleet.”
    Suddenly, Watkins pulled the glass from his eye in growing disbelief, checked the lens for smudges, and not finding any, retrained it on the battle-scarred rebel ironclad. “But who on earth—” The captain paused to refocus his glass. “Good God,” he muttered in wonder. “Who do you make out atop their pilothouse?”
    It took much to disturb Crosby’s steel composure, but his face went totally blank. “It looks like . . . , but that’s impossible.”
    The guns of Fort Wool opened up and water spouts gushed in a curtain around the Texas almost obliterating her from sight. Then she burst through the spray with magnificent perseverance and surged on.
    Watkins gazed, fascinated, at the tall, lean man standing on the pilothouse. Then his gaze turned to numbed horror. “Lord, it is him!” He dropped his glass and swung to face Crosby. “Signal the forts to cease their fire. Hurry, man!”
    The guns of Fortress Monroe followed those of Fort Wool, pouring their shot at the Texas. Most went high, but two exploded against the ironclad’s smokestack, gouging huge holes in the circular walls. The army artillerymen desperately reloaded, each hoping their gun would deliver a knockout blow.
    The Texas was only 200 yards away when the commanders of the forts acknowledged Watkins’ signal and their guns went silent one by one. Watkins and Crosby ran to the bow of the New Ironsides just in time to get a distinct look at the two men in bloodied Confederate navy uniforms and the bearded man in rumpled civilian clothes who cast a steady gaze at them and then threw a tired and solemn salute.
    They stood absolutely still, knowing in shocked certainty that the sight they were witnessing would be forever etched in their minds. And despite the storm of controversy that would later rage around them, they and the hundreds of other men on the ship and those lining the walls of the forts never wavered in their absolute belief of who they saw standing amid the shambles of the Confederate ironclad that morning.
    Almost a thousand men watched in helpless awe as the Texas steamed past, smoke flowing from her silent gun-ports, her flapping flag shredded and torn and tied to a bent railing post. Not a sound or shot was heard as she entered the enclosing fog bank and was forever lost to view.
     
    • General Grant’s Union army supply port on the James River.
      t The original Monitor was only the first of her class. Almost sixty more were built of varied design as late as 1903.
     

LOST

 

 

     
    October 10, 1931
    The Southwest Sahara
    Kitty Mannock had the odd feeling that she was flying head-on into nothingness. She was lost, utterly and hopelessly lost. For two hours she and her flimsy little aircraft had been knocked about the sky by a severe sandstorm that shrouded all visibility of the desert below. Alone in that empty, invisible sky, she fought off strange illusions that seemed to bloom out of the surrounding brown cloud.
    Kitty tilted her head back and looked up through the upper windshield. The sun’s orange glow was completely blotted out. Then, for perhaps the tenth time in as many minutes, she dropped her side window and peered over the edge of the cockpit, seeing nothing below but the vast, swirling cloud. The altimeter read 1500 feet, high enough to clear all but the most prominent sandstone plateaus of the Adrar des Iforas, an extension of the mountainous Ahaggar range of the Sahara Desert.
    She trusted to her instruments to keep the plane from slipping into a spin. On four occasions since entering the blinding storm, she had noted a decrease in her altitude and an increasing change of heading, sure signs she was beginning to circle toward the ground. Alert to the danger, she had recovered each time without incident, banking until the needle inside her compass quivered back on a southerly heading of 180 degrees.
    Kitty had tried to follow the Trans-Sahara motor track, but lost it soon after