unteers
than they want. Their armies are growing stronger every day, while ours
are growing weaker every hour. To be honest, there isn't half the
patriotism now there was among us when these troubles first begun.
Desertions are alarmingly frequent, and voluntary enlistments are almost
entirely suspended. We must have men to fight our battles, or else
surrender our cherished liberties to such Hessians and Tories as Curtis
brought against us at Pea Ridge."

"And whipped us with," added one of the men; and the captain couldn't
contradict him, for it was the truth. He could only look at him
reproachfully.

"'Is Sparta dead in your veins?'" exclaimed the captain, quoting from
the speech of Spartacus to his fellow gladiators. "Are you willing to
give up whipped and permit a lot of Regicides and Roundheads to put
their feet on your necks?"

Taking this for his text the officer spoke earnestly for ten minutes,
drawing largely from the fiery editorials of the Southern papers, which
he had read so often that he had them by heart, and trying his best to
infuse a little of his own spirit into the angry, scowling men who had
crowded around him, but without any very flattering success. There was
but one thought in their minds--they had been duped by the Richmond
government, which had so suddenly developed into a despotism that it was
plain the machinery for it had been prepared long before. They could not
go home even for a short time to visit their friends after their term of
service had expired, and it is no wonder that they felt sore over it.
Seeing that he could not arouse their patriotism, the captain next tried
to arouse their combativeness.

"On the same day that the battle of Shiloh was decided against us, there
was another struggle settled a hundred miles nearer to us," said he.
"That too went against us. Island No. 10, the stronghold that was to
have kept the enemy from going down the Mississippi, has fallen, and the
way is open to Memphis."

"But the Yankees will never get there," exclaimed Rodney. "When I came
up the river on the _Mollie Able_, I heard a man say we had a fleet
building there that would eventually take Cairo and St. Louis too."

"I certainly hope he was right, but things don't seem to point that way
now," replied the captain.

"That is good news for us in one respect," Dick Graham remarked. "New
Madrid must have fallen too, and if that is the case, we'll not be
ordered there. It's too late. We'll