me there to that band of New Orleans boys such an hour of
glory as this at Champion's Hill. For two years more, by the waning
light of a doomed cause, they fought on, won fame and honor; but for
blazing splendor--of daring, skill, fortitude, loss and achievement
which this purblind world still sees plainest in fraternal
slaughter--that was the mightiest hour, the mightiest ten minutes, ever
spent, from 'Sixty-one to 'Sixty-five, by Kincaid's Battery.

Right into the face of death's hurricane sprang the ladies' man, swept
the ladies' men. "Battery, trot, walk. Forward into battery! Action
front!" It was at that word that Kincaid's horse went down; but while
the pieces trotted round and unlimbered and the Federal guns vomited
their fire point-blank and blue skirmishers crackled and the gray line
crackled back, and while lead and iron whined and whistled, and chips,
sand and splinters flew, and a dozen boys dropped, the steady voice of
Bartleson gave directions to each piece by number, for "solid shot," or
"case" or "double canister." Only one great blast the foe's artillery
got in while their opponents loaded, and then, with roar and smoke as if
the earth had burst, Kincaid's Battery answered like the sweep of a
scythe. Ah, what a harvest! Instantly the guns were wrapped in their own
white cloud, but, as at Shiloh, they were pointed again, again and again
by the ruts of their recoil, Kincaid and Bartleson each pointing one as
its nine men dwindled to five and to four, and in ten minutes nothing
more was to be done but let the gray line through with fixed bayonets
while Charlie, using one of Hilary's worn-out quips, stood on Roaring
Betsy's trunnion-plates and cursed out to the shattered foe, "Bricks,
lime and sand always on hand!--,--,--!"

Yet this was but a small part of the day's fight, and Champion's Hill
was a lost battle. Next day the carnage was on Baker's Creek and at Big
Black Bridge, and on the next Vicksburg was invested.

LVIII

ARACHNE

Behold, "Vicksburg and the Bends."

In one of those damp June-hot caves galleried into the sheer yellow-clay
sides of her deep-sunken streets, desolate streets where Porter's great
soaring, howling, burrowing "lamp-posts" blew up like steamboats and
flew forty ways in search of women and children, dwelt the Callenders.
Out among Pemberton's trenches and redans, where the woods were dense on
the crowns and faces of the landside bluffs, and the undergrowth was
thi