were soon driven away by the
point-blank fire of the supporting gunboats. But all this time the
shells were falling thick and fast, driving the soldiers to the
bomb-proofs, and tearing to pieces every thing unprotected. One shell
set fire to some wooden structures that stood on the parade-ground in
Fort Jackson; and, as the smoke and flames rose in the air, the
gunners down the river thought that the fort was burning, and cheered
and fired with renewed vigor. The shells that burst upon the levee
soon cut great trenches in it, so that the mighty Mississippi broke
through with a rush, and flooded the country all about. But the forts
seemed as strong and unconquered as ever.

While the soldiers were crowded together in the bomb-proofs to escape
the flying bits of shell, the sailors on the little fleet of
Confederate vessels anchored above them were busily engaged in getting
ready a fire-raft which was to float down the river, and make havoc
among the vessels of the Union fleet. Two such rafts were prepared;
one of which, an immense affair, carrying cords of blazing pine-wood,
was sent down in the early morning at a time when the vessels were
utterly unprepared to defend themselves. Luckily it grounded on a
sandbar, and burned and crackled away harmlessly until it was
consumed. This warned Commander Porter of the danger in which his
mortar-vessels were of a second attack of the same nature; and
accordingly he put in readiness one hundred and fifty small boats
with picked crews, and well supplied with axes and grapnels, whose
duty it was to grapple any future rafts, and tow them into a harmless
position. They did not have long to wait. At sundown that night,
Commander Porter reviewed his little squadron of row-boats as they lay
drawn up in line along the low marshy shores of the mighty river. The
sun sank a glowing red ball beneath the line at which the blue waters
of the gulf and the blue arch of heaven seemed to meet. The long
southern twilight gradually deepened into a black, moonless night. The
cries of frogs and seabirds, and the little flashes of the fireflies,
were silenced and blotted out by the incessant roar and flash of the
tremendous mortars that kept up their deadly work. Suddenly in the
distance the sky grows red and lurid. "The fort is burning!" cry the
men at the guns; but from the masthead comes the response, "No, the
fire is on the river. It is another fire-raft." The alarm was
instantly given to all the v