a plantation half under water, where Black Bayou joins Deer
Creek, to hurry the work in cleaning out that Bayou. The light transports
meanwhile were bringing up more troops from a second detachment. All
through the Friday the navy great guns were heard booming in the
distance, growing quicker and quicker, until the quivering air shook the
hanging things in that vast jungle. Saws stopped, and axes were poised
over shoulders, and many times that day the General lifted his head
anxiously. As he sat down in the evening in a slave cabin redolent with
corn pone and bacon, the sound still hovered among the trees and rolled
along the still waters.

The General slept lightly. It was three o'clock Saturday morning when the
sharp challenge of a sentry broke the silence. A negro, white eyed,
bedraggled, and muddy, stood in the candle light under the charge of a
young lieutenant. The officer saluted, and handed the General a roll of
tobacco.

"I found this man in the swamp, sir. He has a message from the Admiral--"

The General tore open the roll and took from it a piece of tissue paper
which he spread out and held under the candle. He turned to a staff
officer who had jumped from his bed and was hurrying into his coat.

"Porter's surrounded," he said. The order came in a flash. "Kilby Smith
and all men here across creek to relief at once. I'll take canoe through
bayou to Hill's and hurry reenforcements."

The staff officer paused, his hand on the latch of the door.

"But your escort, General. You're not going through that sewer in a canoe
without an escort!"

"I guess they won't look for a needle in that haystack," the General
answered. For a brief second he eyed the lieutenant. "Get back to your
regiment, Brice, if you want to go," he said.

Stephen saluted and went out. All through the painful march that
followed, though soaked in swamp water and bruised by cypress knees, he
thought of Sherman in his canoe, winding unprotected through the black
labyrinth, risking his life that more men might be brought to the rescue
of the gunboats.

The story of that rescue has been told most graphically by Sherman
himself. How he picked up the men at work on the bayou and marched them
on a coal barge; how he hitched the barge to a navy tug; how he met the
little transport with a fresh load of troops, and Captain Elijah Brent's
reply when the General asked if he would follow him. "As long as the boat
holds together, General." And he k