y commander on board a steamer is
almost as helpless as an unarmed man, so far as the risks of water go. A
seaman must command there. In the hazardous voyage of last night, I
had learned, though unjustly, to distrust every official on board the
steamboat except this excitable, brave, warm-hearted sailor; and now,
among these added dangers, to lose him! The responsibility for his life
also thrilled me; he was not among my soldiers, and yet he was killed. I
thought of his wife and children, of whom he had spoken; but one learns
to think rapidly in war, and, cautioning the Major to silence, I went up
to the hurricane-deck and drew in the helpless body, that it should be
safe from further desecration, and then looked to see where we were.

We were now gliding past a safe reach of marsh, while our assailants
were riding by cross-paths to attack us at the next bluff. It was Reed's
Bluff where we were first attacked, and Scrubby Bluff, I think, was
next. They were shelled in advance, but swarmed manfully to the banks
again as we swept round one of the sharp angles of the stream beneath
their fire. My men were now pretty well imprisoned below in the hot and
crowded hold, and actually fought each other, the officers afterwards
said, for places at the open port-holes, from which to aim. Others
implored to be landed, exclaiming that they "supposed de Cunnel knew
best," but it was "mighty mean" to be shut up down below, when they
might be "fightin' de Secesh _in de clar field_." This clear field, and
no favor, was what they thenceforward sighed for. But in such difficult
navigation it would have been madness to think of landing, although one
daring Rebel actually sprang upon the large boat which we towed astern,
where he was shot down by one of our sergeants. This boat was soon after
swamped and abandoned, then taken and repaired by the Rebels at a later
date, and finally, by a piece of dramatic completeness, was seized by
a party of fugitive slaves, who escaped in it to our lines, and some of
whom enlisted in my own regiment.

It has always been rather a mystery to me why the Rebels did not fell
a few trees across the stream at some of the many sharp angles where we
might so easily have been thus imprisoned. This, however, they did
not attempt, and with the skilful pilotage of our trusty
Corporal,--philosophic as Socrates through all the din, and occasionally
relieving his mind by taking a shot with his rifle through the high
por