seers. We glided safely on, mile after mile. The day was
unutterably hot, but all else seemed propitious. The men had their
combustibles all ready to fire the bridge, and our hopes were unbounded.

But by degrees the channel grew more tortuous and difficult, and while
the little Milton glided smoothly over everything, the Enoch Dean, my
own boat, repeatedly grounded. On every occasion of especial need, too,
something went wrong in her machinery,--her engine being constructed on
some wholly new patent, of which, I should hope, this trial would prove
entirely sufficient. The black pilot, who was not a soldier, grew more
and more bewildered, and declared that it was the channel, not his
brain, which had gone wrong; the captain, a little elderly man, sat
wringing his hands in the pilot-box; and the engineer appeared to be
mingling his groans with those of the diseased engine. Meanwhile I,
in equal ignorance of machinery and channel, had to give orders only
justified by minute acquaintance with both. So I navigated on general
principles, until they grounded us on a mud-bank, just below a wooded
point, and some two miles from the bridge of our destination. It was
with a pang that I waved to Major Strong, who was on the other side of
the channel in a tug, not to risk approaching us, but to steam on and
finish the work, if he could.

Short was his triumph. Gliding round the point, he found himself
instantly engaged with a light battery of four or six guns, doubtless
the same we had seen in the distance. The Milton was within two hundred
and fifty yards. The Connecticut men fought then: guns well, aided by
the blacks, and it was exasperating for us to hear the shots, while we
could see nothing and do nothing. The scanty ammunition of our bow gun
was exhausted, and the gun in the stern was useless, from the position
in which we lay. In vain we moved the men from side to side, rocking the
vessel, to dislodge it. The heat was terrific that August afternoon;
I remember I found myself constantly changing places, on the scorched
deck, to keep my feet from being blistered. At last the officer in
charge of the gun, a hardy lumberman from Maine, got the stern of the
vessel so far round that he obtained the range of the battery through
the cabin windows, "but it would be necessary," he cooly added, on
reporting to me this fact, "to shoot away the corner of the cabin." I
knew that this apartment was newly painted and gilded, and the idol o