her and exploded in the air, it seemed
as if a battle were taking place in the heavens as well as on the
earth. It all ended as suddenly as it commenced."

While this gigantic contest was going on in the river abreast of the
forts, the people of New Orleans were thronging the streets, listening
to the unceasing roar of the great guns, and discussing, with pale
faces and anxious hearts, the outcome of the fight. "Farragut can
never pass our forts. His wooden ships will be blown to pieces by
their fire, or dashed into atoms by the 'Manassas,'" people said. But
many listened in silence: they had husbands, sons, or brothers in that
fearful fight, and who could tell that they would return alive? By and
by the firing ceased. Only an occasional shot broke the stillness of
the morning. Then came the suspense. Had the fleet been beaten back,
or was it above the forts, and even now sullenly steaming up to the
city? Everybody rushed for the housetops to look to the southward,
over the low land through which the Mississippi winds. An hour's
waiting, and they see curls of smoke rising above the trees, then
slender dark lines moving along above the tree-tops. "Are they our
ships?" every one cries; and no one answers until the dark lines are
seen to be crossed by others at right angles. They are masts with
yard-arms, masts of seagoing vessels, the masts of the invader's
fleet. A cry of grief, of fear, of rage, goes up from the housetops.
"To the levee!" cry the men, and soon the streets resound with the
rush of many feet toward the river. "The river is crooked, and its
current swift. It will be hours before the Yankees can arrive: let us
burn, destroy, that they may find no booty." Let one who was in the
sorrowful city that terrible April day tell the story. "I went to the
river-side. There, until far into the night, I saw hundreds of drays
carrying cotton out of the presses and yards to the wharves, where it
was fired. The glare of those sinuous miles of flame set men and women
weeping and wailing thirty miles away, on the farther shore of Lake
Pontchartrain. But the next day was the day of terrors. During the
night, fear, wrath, and sense of betrayal, had run through the people
as the fire had run through the cotton. You have seen, perhaps, a
family fleeing, with lamentations and wringing of hands, out of a
burning house; multiply it by thousands upon thousands: that was New
Orleans, though the houses were not burning. The firemen w