t his soldiers.

"Captain Phelps, you will please to take my tug and drop down also,"
said Commodore Foote. "If you are willing to run the risk, you are at
liberty to accompany Captain Phelps," were his words to me. What is a
thing worth that costs nothing?

We drop down the stream slowly and cautiously.

"We are in easy range. If the Rebels are there, they could trouble us,"
says Captain Phelps.

We drop nearer. The flag is still waving. The man holding it swings his
hat.

They are not Rebels, but Union cavalry! Away we dash. The other tug,
with General Sherman, is close behind.

"A little more steam! Lay her in quick!" says Captain Phelps.

He is not to be beaten. We jump ashore, scramble up the bank ahead of
all the soldiers, reach the upper works, and fling out the Stars and
Stripes to the bright morning sunshine on the abandoned works of the
Rebel Gibraltar!

The crews of the boats crowd the upper decks, and send up their joyous
shouts. The soldiers farther up stream give their wild hurrahs. Around
us are smoking ruins,--burned barracks and storehouses, barrels of flour
and bacon simmering in the fire. There are piles of shot and shell. The
great chain has broken by its own weight. At the landing are hundreds of
Mr. Maury's torpedoes,--old iron now. We wander over the town, along the
fortifications, view the strong defences, and wonder that the Rebels
gave it up,--defended as it was by one hundred and twenty guns,--without
a struggle, but the fall of Fort Donelson compelled them to evacuate the
place. They carried off about half of the guns, and tumbled many of
those they left behind down the embankment into the river. The force
which had fled numbered about sixteen thousand. Five thousand went down
the river on steamboats, and the others were sent to Corinth on the
cars.

This abandonment of Columbus freed Kentucky of Rebel troops. It had been
invaded about six months, and Jeff Davis hoped to secure it as one of
the Confederate States, but he was disappointed in his expectations. The
majority of the people in that noble State could not be induced to go
out of the Union.

CHAPTER X

OPERATIONS AT NEW MADRID.

There are many islands in the Mississippi, so many that the river pilots
have numbered them from Cairo to New Orleans. The first is just below
Cairo. No. 10 is about sixty miles below, where the river makes a sharp
curve, sweeping round a tongue of land towards the west and northwest,