Taking advantage of the darkness, a little after midnight sixteen
British frigates, with bomb-ketches and barges, moved up within
close range. At one o'clock they suddenly opened a tremendous
and destructive fire upon the fort. Five hundred bombs fell
within the ramparts; many more burst over them.

The crisis of the fight came when, in the darkness, a rocket ship
and five barges attempted to pass up the north channel to the
city. They were not perceived until the British, thinking
themselves safe and the ruse successful, gave a derisive cheer at
the fort under whose guns they had passed. In avoiding Fort
McHenry, however, they had fallen under the guns of the fort at
the Lazaretto, on the opposite side of the channel. This fort,
opening fire, so crippled the daring vessels that some of them
had to be towed out in their hasty retreat.

From midnight till morning Key could know nothing of the fortunes
of the fight. At such close quarters a dense smoke enveloped
both the ships and the fort, and added to the blackness of the
night.

After the failure to ascend the north branch of the Patapsco, the
firing slackened. Now and then a sullen and spiteful gun shot
its flame from the side of a British vessel. Key, pacing the
deck of the cartel ship, to which he had been transferred, could
not guess the cause of this. The slackened fire might mean the
success of the land attack, in which case it would not have been
necessary to waste any more powder on the fort. Again, it might
be that the infernal rain of shells had dismantled the little
fort itself, and the enemy was only keeping up a precautionary