The great crowd of people was still there, all watching and waiting, The fort was battered and torn, but above it still hung the defiant flag, and there was no offer of surrender.
"Look! Look!" Langdon cried suddenly, reckless of all discipline, as he pointed a forefinger toward the sea.
Harry saw a column of smoke rising, and defining itself clearly against the pale blue sky.
"The Yankee fleet!" cried one of the officers, as he put his glasses to his eyes.
General Beauregard, General Ripley, and officers in every other battery, also were watching that new column of smoke through glasses.

The dark spire in truth rose from the Baltic, the chief ship of the Union, having on board the energetic Fox himself, and two hundred soldiers.
But chance and the elements seemed to have conspired against the secretary.

One of his strongest ships had gone to the relief of another fort further south, others had been scattered by a storm, and the Baltic had only two sister vessels as she approached, over a rolling gray sea, the fiery volcano that was once the peaceful harbor of Charleston.
Harry saw the first column of smoke increase to three, and they knew then that the number of the Union vessels was far less than had been expected.
"Will they undertake to force the harbor and reach Sumter ?" he asked of Colonel Talbot, who was then in the battery.
"If they do," replied the Colonel, "it will be a case of the most reckless folly.

They would be sunk in short order, as they come right into the teeth of our guns.

The sea itself, is against them.