we boys
practiced firing at ducks and gulls with our revolvers.

February 5th we started up the sound, the gunboats taking the lead. It was
a handsome sight, eighty ships in all, forty gunboats, and about the same
number of other ships carrying the troops, baggage, provisions,
ammunition, etc. The naval part was under the command of Flag Officer
Goldsborough. At about five o'clock we anchored in plain sight of Roanoke
Island. We were enveloped in a dense fog all day the 6th and did not
move, and saw nothing. To break the monotony, Colonel Maggi got us
together on the hurricane deck and made a speech. Considering their
brevity, as well as his accent which was very Italian, his speeches were
very funny. This one was about like the following: "Soldiers ob de 21st,
to-day you be 21st, tomorrow you be 1st."

February 7th at nine o'clock we moved on, the gunboats leading the way,
and they were soon engaged first with some Confederate gunboats, then with
the forts on the island, the rebel gunboats retiring behind a line of
obstructions.

The battle between our gunboats and the forts continued more or less
fiercely all day. In the middle of the afternoon Fort Bartou, the fort
nearest us, was practically silenced. At four o'clock we began to load
into small boats preparatory to making a landing, and at five o'clock
three or four thousand Union troops were on the island.

We landed at Ashby's Cove, on the edge of a large field, where the water
was sufficiently shallow to enable us to get ashore from small boats there
being no landing of any kind on that side of the island. The boat I was in
ran up into a lot of bogs and grass. As I sprang from the boat I made a
good jump and landed on a large bog and got ashore with only wet feet,
but one of the boys who followed me made a less successful jump and landed
in three feet of water. Just at that moment we saw the light flash on
bayonets just across the field in the edge of the wood, and we expected
the Johnnies would open fire on us every minute, but they did not, nor did
we open fire on them. Soon we were up to the edge of the wood where we had
seen the flashes of light on the bayonets. There was a road there and what
we had seen evidently was flashes on the guns of a company of soldiers
passing along that road.

Early in the evening it began to rain and it rained most of the night. By
putting on my rubber blanket which protected my body, arms and legs, my
havelock kept the rai