re moving across the open fields
between the river and the ridge, when a small boat which had for some
minutes been in sight, steaming rapidly down the river, began to take a
part in the affair. We had watched her with great interest, and were
inclined to think, from her bold unhesitating advance, that she was a
river gunboat, and when she came within a mile of the town all doubts
upon the subject were dispelled. Suddenly checking her way, she tossed
her snub nose defiantly, like an angry beauty of the coal-pits, sidled a
little toward the town, and commenced to scold. A bluish-white,
funnel-shaped cloud spouted out from her left-hand bow and a shot flew
at the town, and then changing front forward, she snapped a shell at the
men on the other side. The ridge was soon gained by the regiments,
however, the enemy not remaining to contest it, and they were sheltered
by it from the gunboat's fire. I wish I were sufficiently master of
nautical phraseology to do justice to this little vixen's style of
fighting, but she was so unlike a horse, or a piece of light artillery,
even, that I can not venture to attempt it. She was boarded up tightly
with tiers of heavy oak planking, in which embrasures were cut for the
guns, of which she carried three bronze twelve-pounder howitzers,
apparently. Captain Byrnes transferred the two Parrots to an eminence
just upon the river and above the town, and answered her fire. His solid
shot skipped about her, in close proximity, and his shells burst close
to her, but none seemed to touch her--although it was occasionally hard
to tell whether she was hit or not. This duel was watched with the most
breathless interest by the whole division; the men crowded in intense
excitement upon the bluffs, near the town, to witness it, and General
Morgan exhibited an emotion he rarely permitted to be seen.

Two of his best regiments were separated from him by the broad river,
and were dismounted, a condition which always appeals to a cavalryman's
strongest sympathies; they might at any moment, he feared, be attacked
by overwhelming forces, for he did not know what was upon the other
side, or how large a swarm Hines had stirred up in the hornet's nest. He
himself might be attacked, if delayed too long, by the enemy that he
well knew must be following his track. Independently of all
considerations of immediate danger, he was impatient at delay and
anxious to try his fortune in the new field he had selected. There