n through the
darkness.

"Soon they came to a sudden bend in the stream, where the swift current
formed a furious whirlpool, and this catching the laboring boat,
whirled her suddenly round, and drove her, head on, into the
quicksands. Mattocks were plied, and excavations made round the imbedded
bow, and the bowman uttered oaths loud enough to have raised a small
earthquake; but still the boat was immovable. She was stuck fast in the
mud, and every effort to move her was fruitless. Garfield ordered a
small boat to be lowered, and take a line to the other bank, by which to
warp the steamer free; but the captain and now the crew protested it was
certain death to attempt to cross that foaming torrent at midnight.

"They might as well have repeated to him the Creed and the Ten
Commandments, for Garfield himself sprang into the boat and called to
Brown to follow. He took the helm and laid her bow across the stream,
but the swift current swept them downward. After incredible labor they
made the opposite bank, but far below the steamboat. Closely hugging the
shore, they now crept up the stream, and fastening the line to a tree,
rigged a windlass, and finally warped the vessel again into deep water.

"All that night, and all the next day, and all the following night they
struggled with the furious river, Garfield never but once leaving the
helm, and then for only a few hours' sleep, which he snatched in his
clothes in the day-time. At last they rounded to at the Union camp, and
then went up a cheer that might have been heard all over Kentucky. His
waiting men, frantic with joy, seized their glorious commander, and were
with difficulty prevented from bearing him on their shoulders to his
quarters."

The little army was saved from starvation by the canal-boy, who had not
forgotten his old trade. He had risked his life a dozen times over in
making the perilous trip, which has been so graphically described in the
passages I have quoted. But for his early and humble experience, he
never would have been able to bring the little steamer up the foaming
river. Little did he dream in the days when, as a boy, he guided the
_Evening Star_, that fifteen years hence, an officer holding an
important command he would use the knowledge then acquired to save a
famishing army. We can not wonder that his men should have been
devotedly attached to such a commander.

I have said that the Kentucky campaign was not one of the most
important opera