noon
What was the use of our gunners aiming at the flat , gray arches of these uncanny ocean-tortoises ? The heavy shells splashed into the water all around them , and when one did succeed in hitting one of the boats , it was simply dashed to pieces against the armor-plate , which was several feet thick , or else it glanced off harmlessly like hail dancing off the domed roof of a pavilion . The only targets were the flames which shot incessantly out of the mouths of the hostile guns like out of a funnel-shaped crater . By noon all the armored domes of the Port Townsend batteries had been destroyed and one gun after another had ceased firing . The horizontal armor-plates , too , which protected the disappearing gun-carriages belonging to the huge guns of the other forts , had not been able to withstand the masses of steel which came down almost perpendicularly from above them . One single well-aimed shot had usually sufficed to cripple the complicated mechanism and once that was injured , it was impossible to bring the gun back into position for firing . The concrete roofs of the ammunition rooms and barracks were shot to pieces and the traverses were reduced to rubbish heaps by the bursting of the numerous shells of the enemy .