he Saline at Jenkins's Ferry, but only after a hard fight on
the 30th of April with the combined forces of Smith and Price.
Finally, the 2d of May saw Steele back at Little Rock with his army
half starved, greatly reduced in men and material in these six
ineffectual weeks, thinking no longer of Halleck's wide schemes of
conquest, or even of Grant's wish to hold the line of the Red River,
but rather hoping for some stroke of good fortune to enable him to
defend the line of the Arkansas and to keep Price out of Missouri.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE DAM.

Directly after the capture of Port Hudson, Bailey offered to float
the two Confederate transport steamers, _Starlight_ and _Red Chief_,
that were found lying on their sides high and almost dry in the
middle of Thompson's Creek. With smiles and a shrug or two permission
was given him to try; he tried; he succeeded; and this experience
it undoubtedly was that caused his words to be listened to so
readily when he now proposed to rescue the fleet in the same way.
But to build at leisure and unmolested a pair of little wing-dams
in the ooze of Thompson's creek and to close the opening by a
central boom against that sluggish current was one thing; it was
quite another to repeat the same operation against time, while
surrounded and even cut off by a strong and active enemy, this too
on the scale required to hold back the rushing waters of the Red
River, at a depth sufficient for the passage of the heaviest of
the gunboats and for a time long enough to let the whole fleet go
by. Yet, bold as the bare conception seems, and stupendous as the
work looks when regarded in detail, no sooner had it been suggested
by Bailey then every engineer in the army at once entered heartily
into the scheme. Palfrey, who had previously made a complete survey
of the rapids, examined the plan carefully, and approved it.
Franklin, to whose staff Bailey was attached, himself an engineer
of distinguished attainments and wide experience, approved it, and
Banks at once gave orders to carry it out.

In the month that had elapsed since the fleet ascended the rapids,
the river had fallen more than six feet; for more than a mile the
rocks now lay bare. In the worst places but forty inches of water
were found, while with seven feet the heavy gunboats could barely
float, and in some places the channel, shallow as it was, narrowed
to a thread. The current ran nine miles an hour. The whole fall
was thirteen