lure of our military guard made the situation somewhat grave. For
two of us, at least, capture meant hanging out of hand. I had never been
hanged in all my life and was not enamored of the prospect. Fortunately
for us the bandits had selected their point of attack without military
foresight. Immediately below them a bayou, impassable to them, let into
the river. The moment we had drifted below it we were safe from boarding
and capture. The captain was found in hiding and an empty pistol at his
ear persuaded him to resume command of his vessel; the engineer and pilot
were encouraged to go back to their posts and after some remarkably long
minutes, during which we were under an increasingly long-range fire, we
got under way. A few cotton bales piled about the pilot-house made us
tolerably safe from that sort of thing in the future and then we took
account of our damages. Nobody had been killed and only a few were
wounded. This gratifying result was attributable to the fact that, being
unarmed, nearly everybody had dived below at the first fire and taken
cover among the cotton bales. While issuing a multitude of needless
commands from the front of the hurricane-deck I looked below, and there,
stretched out at full length on his stomach, lay a long, ungainly person,
clad in faded butternut, bare-headed, his long, lank hair falling down
each side of his neck, his coat-tails similarly parted, and his enormous
feet spreading their soles to the blue sky. He had an old-fashioned
horse-pistol, some two feet long, which he was in the act of sighting
across his left palm for a parting shot at the now distant assailants. A
more ludicrous figure I never saw; I laughed outright; but when his weapon
went off it was matter for gratitude to be above it instead of before it.
It was the "cannon" whose note I had marked all through the unequal fray.

The fellow was a returned Confederate whom we had taken on at one of the
upper landings as our only passenger; we were dead-heading him to Mobile.
He was undoubtedly in hearty sympathy with the enemy, and I at first
suspected him of collusion, but circumstances not necessary to detail here
rendered this impossible. Moreover, I had distinctly seen one of the
"guerrillas" fall and remain down after my own weapon was empty, and no
man else on board except the passenger had fired a shot or had a shot to
fire. When everything had been made snug again, and we were gliding along
under the stars, without