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Flag-Officer Farragut, he had been sent in charge of ordnance and deserters
to a Confederate vessel in the river; that Lieutenant R-, a friend of his,
on the way to report at Fort Jackson during the hot shelling, had invited thelad to accompany him by way of a pleasure trip; that while they were cross-ing the moat around Fort Jackson, in a canoe, and under heavy fire, a thir-teen-inch mortar-shell had struck the water near, half filling their craft; and
that, after watching the fire from this point for an hour, C- had pulled
back again alone, against the Mississippi current, under fire for a mile and ahalf of the way—passing an astonished alligator who had been hit on thehead by a piece of shell and was dying under protest. Thus ended a tripalluded to by C-twenty years later as an example of juvenile foolhardiness.
Aboard the steamship Star of the West , ☆ next day, he and other midship-men in charge of gold and silver coin from the mint and banks of NewOrleans , and millions more of paper money, over which they were ordered tokeep guard with drawn swords, hurried away from the doomed city, wherethe enemy’s arrival was momentarily expected, and where the burning shipsand steamers and bales of cotton along the levee made a huge crescent offire. Keeping just ahead of the enemy’s fleet, they reached Vicksburg , andthence went overland to Mobile, where their charge was given up in safety.
And now we come to the 31st of May, 1862, when the eyes of the wholecontinent turned to Richmond. On that day Johnston assaulted the Federalswho had been advanced to Seven Pines [see pp. 203, 220]. I 11 face of recentreverses, we in Richmond had begun to feel like the prisoner of the Inquisi-tion in Poe’s story, cast into a dungeon of slowly contracting walls. With thesound of guns, therefore, in the direction of Seven Pines, every heart leapedas if deliverance were at hand. And yet there was no joy in the wild pulsa-tion, since those to whom we looked for succor w r ere our own flesh and blood,barring the way to a foe of superior numbers, abundantly provided, as we
•fo The same vessel that drew the opening shots of the war at Charleston; seized at New Orleans when
Louisiana seceded; later, sunk by the Confederates in the Yazoo, near Fort Pemberton.— Editors.