The water
boils and bubbles around us. It is tossed up in columns and jets. There
are sudden flashes overhead, explosions, and sulphurous clouds, and
whirring of ragged pieces of iron. The uproar increases. The cannonade
reverberates from the high bluff behind the city to the dark-green
forest upon the Arkansas shore, and echoes from bend to bend.

The space between the fleets is gradually lessening. The Yankees are not
retreating, but advancing. A shot strikes the Little Rebel. One tears
through the General Price. Another through the General Bragg. Commodore
Montgomery is above the city, and begins to fall back. He is not ready
to come to close quarters. Fifteen minutes pass by, but it seems not
more than two. How fast one lives at such a time! All of your senses are
quickened. You see everything, hear everything. The blood rushes through
your veins. Your pulse is quickened. You long to get at the enemy,--to
sweep over the intervening space, lay your boat alongside, pour in a
broadside, and knock them to pieces in a twinkling! You care nothing for
the screaming of the shot, the bursting of the shells. You have got over
all that. You have but one thought,--_to tear down that hateful
flaunting flag, to smite the enemies of your country into the dust_!

While this cannonade was going on, I noticed the two rams casting loose
from the shore. I heard the tinkle of the engineer's bell for more fire
and a full head of steam. The sharpshooters took their places. The Queen
came out from the shelter of the great cottonwoods, crossed the river,
and passed down between the Benton and Carondelet. Colonel Ellet stood
beside the pilot, and waved his hand to us on board the Jessie Benton.
The Monarch was a little later, and, instead of following in the wake of
the Queen, passed between the Cairo and the St. Louis.

See the Queen! Her great wheels whirl up clouds of spray, and leave a
foaming path. She carries a silver train sparkling in the morning light.
She ploughs a furrow, which rolls the width of the river. Our boat
dances like a feather on the waves. She gains the intervening space
between the fleets. Never moved a Queen so determinedly, never one more
fleet,--almost leaping from the water. The Stars and Stripes stream to
the breeze beneath the black banner unfolding, expanding, and trailing
far away from her smoke-stacks. There is a surging, hissing, and
smothered screaming of the pent-up steam in her boilers, as if they had