ation, all of us except
Frank were released and put on the witness-stand. We gave a true and
congruent history of the affair. The holdover justice listened to it all
very patiently and then, with commendable brevity and directness of
action, fined Frank five dollars and costs for disorderly conduct. There
was no appeal.

There were queer characters in Alabama in those days, as you shall see.
Once upon a time the special agent and I started down the Tombigbee River
with a steamboat load of government cotton--some six hundred bales. At one
of the military stations we took on a guard of a dozen or fifteen soldiers
under command of a non-commissioned officer. One evening, just before
dusk, as we were rounding a bend where the current set strongly against
the left bank of the stream and the channel lay close to that shore, we
were suddenly saluted with a volley of bullets and buckshot from that
direction. The din of the firing, the rattle and crash of the missiles
splintering the woodwork and the jingle of broken glass made a very rude
arousing from the tranquil indolence of a warm afternoon on the sluggish
Tombigbee. The left bank, which at this point was a trifle higher than the
hurricane deck of a steamer, was now swarming with men who, almost near
enough to jump aboard, looked unreasonably large and active as they sprang
about from cover to cover, pouring in their fire. At the first volley the
pilot had deserted his wheel, as well he might, and the boat, drifting in
to the bank under the boughs of a tree, was helpless. Her jackstaff and
yawl were carried away, her guards broken in, and her deck-load of cotton
was tumbling into the stream a dozen bales at once. The captain was
nowhere to be seen, the engineer had evidently abandoned his post and the
special agent had gone to hunt up the soldiers. I happened to be on the
hurricane deck, armed with a revolver, which I fired as rapidly as I
could, listening all the time for the fire of the soldiers--and listening
in vain. It transpired later that they had not a cartridge among them; and
of all helpless mortals a soldier without a cartridge is the most
imbecile. But all this time the continuous rattle of the enemy's guns and
the petulant pop of my own pocket firearm were punctuated, as it were, by
pretty regularly recurring loud explosions, as of a small cannon. They
came from somewhere forward--I supposed from the opposition, as I knew we
had no artillery on board.

The fai