ps--some of them the same we knew so well
and so terribly at home--if they come I--whatever happens--I want to see
it!"

LXVIII

BY THE DAWN'S EARLY LIGHT

Luck loves to go in mask. It turned out quite as well, after all, that
for two days, by kind conspiracy of Constance and Miranda, the boat trip
was delayed. In that time no fleet came.

Here at the head of her lovely bay tremblingly waited Mobile, never
before so empty of men, so full of women and children. Southward, from
two to four leagues apart, ran the sun-beaten, breezy margins of
snow-white sand-hills evergreen with weird starveling pines, dotted with
pretty summer homes and light steamer-piers. Here on the Eastern Shore
were the hotels: "Howard's," "Short's," "Montrose," "Battle's Wharf" and
Point Clear, where summer society had been wont to resort all the way
from beloved New Orleans. Here, from Point Clear, the bay, broadening
south-westward, doubled its width, and here, by and by, this eastern
shore-line suddenly became its southern by returning straight westward
in a long slim stretch of dazzling green-and-white dunes, and shut its
waters from the Gulf of Mexico except for a short "pass" of a few
hundred yards width and for some three miles of shoal water between the
pass and Dauphin Island; and there on that wild sea-wall's end--Mobile
Point--a dozen leagues due south from the town--sat Fort Morgan, keeping
this gate, the port's main ship-channel. Here, north-west from Morgan,
beyond this main entrance and the league of impassable shoals, Fort
Gaines guarded Pelican Channel, while a mile further townward Fort
Powell held Grant's Pass into and out of Mississippi Sound, and here
along the west side, out from Mobile, down the magnolia-shaded Bay Shell
Road and the bark road below it, Kincaid's Battery and the last thousand
"reserves" the town's fighting blood could drip--whole platoons of them
mere boys--had marched, these two days, to Forts Powell and Gaines.

All this the Callenders took in with the mind's eye as they bent over a
candle-lighted map, while aware by telegraph that behind Gaines,
westward on Dauphin Island, blue troops from New Orleans had landed and
were then night-marching upon the fort in a black rainstorm. Furthest
down yonder, under Morgan's hundred and fifteen great guns, as Anna
pointed out, in a hidden east-and-west double row athwart the main
channel, leaving room only for blockade-runners, were the torpedoes,
nearly s