atis, and sharp pointed
_chevaux-de-frise_.

Against this fortification marched Grant with an army of eighteen
thousand men, and Foote with his flotilla of gunboats. The Sunday
before the start, Foote, who was a descendant of the old Puritans, and
ever as ready to pray as to fight, attended church in a little
meeting-house at Cairo. The clergyman did not appear on time; and the
congregation waited, until many, growing weary, were leaving the
church. Then the bluff old sailor rose in his pew, and, marching to
the pulpit, delivered a stirring sermon, offering thanks for the
victories of the Union arms, and imploring divine aid in the coming
struggles. The next day he was on his way to hurl shot and shell at
the men in the trenches of Fort Donelson.

While the capture of Fort Henry was a feather in the caps of the
sailor-boys of the North, Fort Donelson must be credited to the valor
of the soldiers. Against the heavy wall of the water-batteries, the
guns of Foote's little flotilla pounded away in vain, while the heavy
shells from the Confederate cannon did dreadful work on the thinly
armored gunboats. It was on the 13th of April that the assault was
opened by the "Carondelet." This vessel had reached the scene of
action before the rest of the flotilla, and by order of the army
commander tested the strength of the fort by a day's cannonade. She
stationed herself about a mile from the batteries, at a spot where she
would be somewhat protected by a jutting point, and began a deliberate
cannonade with her bow-guns. One hundred and thirty shots went
whizzing from her batteries against the front of the Confederate
batteries, without doing any serious damage. Then came an iron ball
weighing one hundred and twenty pounds, fired from a heavy gun, which
burst through one of her portholes, and scattered men bleeding and
mangled in every direction over the gun-deck. She withdrew a short
distance for repairs, but soon returned, and continued the fire the
remainder of the day. When evening fell, she had sent one hundred and
eighty shells at the fort, with the result of killing one man. This
was not promising.

The next day the attack was taken up by all the gunboats. The distance
chosen this time was four hundred yards, and the fight was kept up
most stubbornly. It was St. Valentine's Day; and as the swarthy
sailors, stripped to the waist, begrimed with powder, and stained with
blood, rammed huge iron balls down the muzzles of the g