Sergeant Rivers again
planted his standard, and the men toiled eagerly, for several hours, in
loading our boat to the utmost with the bricks. Meanwhile we questioned
black and white witnesses, and learned for the first time that the
Rebels admitted a repulse at Township Landing, and that Lieutenant Jones
and ten of their number were killed,--though this I fancy to have been
an exaggeration. They also declared that the mysterious steamer Berosa
was lying at the head of the river, but was a broken-down and worthless
affair, and would never get to sea. The result has since proved this;
for the vessel subsequently ran the blockade and foundered near shore,
the crew barely escaping with their lives. I had the pleasure, as it
happened, of being the first person to forward this information to
Admiral Dupont, when it came through the pickets, many months
after,--thus concluding my report on the Berosa.

Before the work at the yard was over, the pickets reported mounted men
in the woods near by, as had previously been the report at Woodstock.
This admonished us to lose no time; and as we left the wharf, immediate
arrangements were made to have the gun-crews all in readiness, and to
keep the rest of the men below, since their musketry would be of little
use now, and I did not propose to risk a life unnecessarily. The chief
obstacle to this was their own eagerness; penned down on one side, they
popped up on the other; their officers, too, were eager to see what was
going on, and were almost as hard to cork down as the men. Add to this,
that the vessel was now very crowded, and that I had to be chiefly on
the hurricane-deck with the pilots. Captain Clifton, master of the
vessel, was brave to excess, and as much excited as the men; he could no
more be kept in the little pilot-house than they below; and when we had
passed one or two bluffs, with no sign of an enemy, he grew more and
more irrepressible, and exposed himself conspicuously on the upper deck.
Perhaps we all were a little lulled by apparent safety; for myself, I
lay down for a moment on a settee in a state-room, having been on my
feet, almost without cessation, for twenty-four hours.

Suddenly there swept down from a bluff above us, on the Georgia side, a
mingling of shout and roar and rattle as of a tornado let loose; and as
a storm of bullets came pelting against the sides of the vessel and
through a window, there went up a shrill answering shout from our own
men. It to