SSH into a VirtualBox VM that was configured via command line

Question

I am trying to set up a cluster of VMs on my Ubuntu laptop so that I can test some distributed code. My goal is to execute a shell script that will spin up the configuration and another script to tear it down when I'm done testing.

I need to be able to SSH into all of the VMs to install the software and I would like to do that over LAN. I am not interested in using the GUI to do this because I would like the process to be automated. I am starting by booting one VM and am trying to forward port 2222 with the following script:

NAMES=(node1)
for i in ${NAMES[@]}; do
    vboxmanage createvm --name ${i} --ostype "Ubuntu_64" --register
    vboxmanage modifyvm ${i} --nic1 nat --nic2 hostonly --hostonlyadapter2 vboxnet0 --memory 1024 --natpf1 "openssh,tcp,,2222,,22"
    vboxheadless -s ${i}
done

After running ifconfig I get the following for vboxnet0:

vboxnet0  Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 0a:00:27:00:00:00  
      inet addr:192.168.56.1  Bcast:192.168.56.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
      inet6 addr: fe80::800:27ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
      UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
      RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:113 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
      RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:19687 (19.6 KB)

But when I run ssh -p 2222 [email protected] I get the following error:

ssh_exchange_identification: read: Connection reset by peer

Perhaps I am approaching this problem incorrectly (I am not terribly well versed in networking), but would appreciate some insight either way.