er-general to command the provisional army.

By this time we had finished most of our preparations, and were busily
engaged in constructing a mine at the extremity of the wharf, for the
benefit of any hostile party that might land there.

Lieutenant Hall returned on the 10th. He had had a very pleasant time in
Washington, and had been petted a good deal by the loyal people of the
North, but his mission proved of no real benefit to the United States,
and we had missed him a great deal, for we had been very short-handed.

He brought nothing definite from the Administration. All the latter
desired was to have a peaceable death-bed, leaving its burdens for Mr.
Lincoln's shoulders.

As Hall passed through Charleston, one of the young men there told him
there was quite a revulsion of feeling with regard to attacking Fort
Sumter. Hall inquired the reason. The reply was, that a schooner which
had just come in had been in great danger from one of our infernal
machines, which had exploded and whitened the water for three hundred
yards around. It seems that Seymour, who is very ingenious, had fastened
a cannon cartridge in the centre of a barrel of paving-stones, so
arranged that when the barrel was rolled off the parapet, the powder
would explode about five feet from the base of the wall. I was trying
the experiment one day as the schooner passed, and the explosion did
look very destructive, as the paving-stones dashed up the water for a
distance of fifty feet from the fort.

On the 14th, we had two more mines ready for any storming party that
might desire to land.

About this time Captain Edward M'Cready, of Charleston, who had formerly
been very intimate with the officers of the garrison, wrote a letter
urging them to throw off their allegiance to the United States, and
enter into the Confederate service. No one took the trouble to answer
it.

CHAPTER IX.

THE CRISIS AT HAND.

South Carolina's Grievances.--Inauguration of President
Lincoln.--Determination to Re-enforce Sumter.--An Audacious
Proposal.--The _Shannon_.--New Rebel Batteries Unmasked.--Formal
Notice of Bombardment.

We saw advertisements now in the Northern papers showing that dramas
founded on our occupation of Fort Sumter, and confinement there, were
being acted both in Boston and New York. It was quite amusing to see our
names in the play-bills, and to find that persons were acting our parts
and spouting mock heroics on th