ation while Captain
Maynadier was making ready, for thirteen-inch mortars had never been
used in war. The largest used by the French and English in the
bombardment of Sebastopol were much smaller.

There came a roar like thunder. It was not a sharp, piercing report, but
a deep, heavy boom, which rolled along the mighty river, echoing and
re-echoing from shore to shore,--a prolonged reverberation, heard fifty
miles away. A keg of powder was burned in the single explosion. The
shell rose in a beautiful curve, exploded five hundred feet high, and
fell in fragments around the distant encampment.

There was a flash beneath the dark forest-trees near the encampment, a
puff of white smoke, an answering roar, and a shot fell into the water a
half-mile down stream from the mortars. The Rebels had accepted the
challenge.

Sunday came. The boats having the mortars in tow dropped them along the
Missouri shore. The gunboats swung into the stream. The Benton fired her
rifled guns over the point of land at the Rebel steamboats below the
island. There was a sudden commotion. They quickly disappeared down the
river towards New Madrid, out of range. During the morning there was a
deep booming from the direction of Point Pleasant. The Rebel gunboats
were trying to drive Colonel Plummer from his position.

Ten o'clock came, the hour for divine service. The church flag was flung
out on the flagstaff of the Benton, and all the commanders called their
crews together for worship. I was on board the Pittsburg with Captain
Thompson. The crew assembled on the upper deck. There were men from
Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, from the Eastern
as well as the Western States. Some of them were scholars and teachers
in Sabbath-schools at home. They were dressed in dark-blue, and each
sailor appeared in his Sunday suit. A small table was brought up from
the cabin, and the flag of our country spread upon it. A Bible was
brought. We stood around the captain with uncovered heads, while he read
the twenty-seventh Psalm. Beautiful and appropriate was that service:--

"The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be
afraid?"

After the Psalm, the prayer, "Our Father which art in heaven."

How impressive! The uncovered group standing around the open Bible, and
the low voices of a hundred men in prayer. On our right hand, looking
down the mighty river, wer