Under Fire
TALK began to run upon the war now, for we were getting down into the
upper edge of the former battle-stretch by this time. Columbus was just
behind us, so there was a good deal said about the famous battle of
Belmont. Several of the boat's officers had seen active service in the
Mississippi war-fleet. I gathered that they found themselves sadly out
of their element in that kind of business at first, but afterward got
accustomed to it, reconciled to it, and more or less at home in it. One
of our pilots had his first war experience in the Belmont fight, as a
pilot on a boat in the Confederate service. I had often had a curiosity
to know how a green hand might feel, in his maiden battle, perched all
solitary and alone on high in a pilot house, a target for Tom, Dick
and Harry, and nobody at his elbow to shame him from showing the white
feather when matters grew hot and perilous around him; so, to me his
story was valuable--it filled a gap for me which all histories had left
till that time empty.
THE PILOT'S FIRST BATTLE
He said--
It was the 7th of November. The fight began at seven in the morning. I
was on the 'R. H. W. Hill.' Took over a load of troops from Columbus.
Came back, and took over a battery of artillery. My partner said he
was going to see the fight; wanted me to go along. I said, no, I wasn't
anxious, I would look at it from the pilot-house. He said I was a
coward, and left.
That fight was an awful sight. General Cheatham made his men strip their
coats off and throw them in a pile, and said, 'Now follow me to hell
or victory!' I heard him say that from the pilot-house; and then he
galloped in, at the head of his troops. Old General Pillow, with his
white hair, mounted on a white horse, sailed in, too, leading his troops
as lively as a boy. By and by the Federals chased the rebels back, and
here they came! tearing along, everybody for himself and Devil take the
hindmost! and down under the bank they scrambled, and took shelter. I
was sitting with my legs hanging out of the pilot-house window. All at
once I noticed a whizzing sound passing my ear. Judged it was a bullet.
I didn't stop to think about anything, I just tilted over backwards and
landed on the floor, and staid there. The balls came booming around.
Three cannon-balls went through the chimney; one ball took off the
corner of the pilot-house; shells were screaming and bursting all
around. Mighty warm times--I wished I hadn't come.
I lay there on the pilot-house floor, while the shots came faster
and faster. I crept in behind the big stove, in the middle of the
pilot-house. Presently a minie-ball came through the stove, and just
grazed my head, and cut my hat. I judged it was time to go away
from there. The captain was on the roof with a red-headed major from
Memphis--a fine-looking man. I heard him say he wanted to leave here,
but 'that pilot is killed.' I crept over to the starboard side to pull
the bell to set her back; raised up and took a look, and I saw about
fifteen shot holes through the window panes; had come so lively I hadn't
noticed them. I glanced out on the water, and the spattering shot were
like a hailstorm. I thought best to get out of that place. I went down
the pilot-house guy, head first--not feet first but head first--slid
down--before I struck the deck, the captain said we must leave there. So
I climbed up the guy and got on the floor again. About that time, they
collared my partner and were bringing him up to the pilot-house between
two soldiers. Somebody had said I was killed. He put his head in and saw
me on the floor reaching for the backing bells. He said, 'Oh, hell, he
ain't shot,' and jerked away from the men who had him by the collar, and
ran below. We were there until three o'clock in the afternoon, and then
got away all right.
The next time I saw my partner, I said, 'Now, come out, be honest, and
tell me the truth. Where did you go when you went to see that battle?'
He says, 'I went down in the hold.'
All through that fight I was scared nearly to death. I hardly knew
anything, I was so frightened; but you see, nobody knew that but me.
Next day General Polk sent for me, and praised me for my bravery and
gallant conduct. I never said anything, I let it go at that. I judged it
wasn't so, but it was not for me to contradict a general officer.
Pretty soon after that I was sick, and used up, and had to go off to
the Hot Springs. When there, I got a good many letters from commanders
saying they wanted me to come back. I declined, because I wasn't well
enough or strong enough; but I kept still, and kept the reputation I had
made.
A plain story, straightforwardly told; but Mumford told me that that
pilot had 'gilded that scare of his, in spots;' that his subsequent
career in the war was proof of it.
We struck down through the chute of Island No. 8, and I went below
and fell into conversation with a passenger, a handsome man, with easy
carriage and an intelligent face. We were approaching Island No. 10,
a place so celebrated during the war. This gentleman's home was on the
main shore in its neighborhood. I had some talk with him about the war
times; but presently the discourse fell upon 'feuds,' for in no part of
the South has the vendetta flourished more briskly, or held out longer
between warring families, than in this particular region. This gentleman
said--
'There's been more than one feud around here, in old times, but I reckon
the worst one was between the Darnells and the Watsons. Nobody don't
know now what the first quarrel was about, it's so long ago; the
Darnells and the Watsons don't know, if there's any of them living,
which I don't think there is. Some says it was about a horse or a
cow--anyway, it was a little matter; the money in it wasn't of no
consequence--none in the world--both families was rich. The thing could
have been fixed up, easy enough; but no, that wouldn't do. Rough words
had been passed; and so, nothing but blood could fix it up after that.
That horse or cow, whichever it was, cost sixty years of killing and
crippling! Every year or so somebody was shot, on one side or the other;
and as fast as one generation was laid out, their sons took up the feud
and kept it a-going. And it's just as I say; they went on shooting each
other, year in and year out--making a kind of a religion of it, you
see--till they'd done forgot, long ago, what it was all about. Wherever
a Darnell caught a Watson, or a Watson caught a Darnell, one of 'em was
going to get hurt--only question was, which of them got the drop on
the other. They'd shoot one another down, right in the presence of the
family. They didn't hunt for each other, but when they happened to meet,
they puffed and begun. Men would shoot boys, boys would shoot men. A man
shot a boy twelve years old--happened on him in the woods, and didn't
give him no chance. If he _had _'a' given him a chance, the boy'd 'a'
shot him. Both families belonged to the same church (everybody around
here is religious); through all this fifty or sixty years' fuss, both
tribes was there every Sunday, to worship. They lived each side of the
line, and the church was at a landing called Compromise. Half the church
and half the aisle was in Kentucky, the other half in Tennessee. Sundays
you'd see the families drive up, all in their Sunday clothes, men,
women, and children, and file up the aisle, and set down, quiet and
orderly, one lot on the Tennessee side of the church and the other on
the Kentucky side; and the men and boys would lean their guns up against
the wall, handy, and then all hands would join in with the prayer and
praise; though they say the man next the aisle didn't kneel down, along
with the rest of the family; kind of stood guard. I don't know; never
was at that church in my life; but I remember that that's what used to
be said.
'Twenty or twenty-five years ago, one of the feud families caught a
young man of nineteen out and killed him. Don't remember whether it was
the Darnells and Watsons, or one of the other feuds; but anyway, this
young man rode up--steamboat laying there at the time--and the first
thing he saw was a whole gang of the enemy. He jumped down behind a
wood-pile, but they rode around and begun on him, he firing back, and
they galloping and cavorting and yelling and banging away with all their
might. Think he wounded a couple of them; but they closed in on him
and chased him into the river; and as he swum along down stream, they
followed along the bank and kept on shooting at him; and when he struck
shore he was dead. Windy Marshall told me about it. He saw it. He was
captain of the boat.
'Years ago, the Darnells was so thinned out that the old man and his two
sons concluded they'd leave the country. They started to take steamboat
just above No. 10; but the Watsons got wind of it; and they arrived just
as the two young Darnells was walking up the companion-way with their
wives on their arms. The fight begun then, and they never got no
further--both of them killed. After that, old Darnell got into trouble
with the man that run the ferry, and the ferry-man got the worst
of it--and died. But his friends shot old Darnell through and
through--filled him full of bullets, and ended him.'
The country gentleman who told me these things had been reared in ease
and comfort, was a man of good parts, and was college bred. His loose
grammar was the fruit of careless habit, not ignorance. This habit
among educated men in the West is not universal, but it is
prevalent--prevalent in the towns, certainly, if not in the cities; and
to a degree which one cannot help noticing, and marveling at. I heard a
Westerner who would be accounted a highly educated man in any country,
say 'never mind, it _don't make no difference_, anyway.' A life-long
resident who was present heard it, but it made no impression upon her.
She was able to recall the fact afterward, when reminded of it; but
she confessed that the words had not grated upon her ear at the
time--a confession which suggests that if educated people can hear such
blasphemous grammar, from such a source, and be unconscious of the deed,
the crime must be tolerably common--so common that the general ear has
become dulled by familiarity with it, and is no longer alert, no longer
sensitive to such affronts.
No one in the world speaks blemishless grammar; no one has ever written
it--_no_ one, either in the world or out of it (taking the Scriptures
for evidence on the latter point); therefore it would not be fair to
exact grammatical perfection from the peoples of the Valley; but they
and all other peoples may justly be required to refrain from _knowingly
and purposely_ debauching their grammar.
I found the river greatly changed at Island No. 10. The island which
I remembered was some three miles long and a quarter of a mile wide,
heavily timbered, and lay near the Kentucky shore--within two hundred
yards of it, I should say. Now, however, one had to hunt for it with a
spy-glass. Nothing was left of it but an insignificant little tuft, and
this was no longer near the Kentucky shore; it was clear over against
the opposite shore, a mile away. In war times the island had been an
important place, for it commanded the situation; and, being heavily
fortified, there was no getting by it. It lay between the upper and
lower divisions of the Union forces, and kept them separate, until a
junction was finally effected across the Missouri neck of land; but the
island being itself joined to that neck now, the wide river is without
obstruction.
In this region the river passes from Kentucky into Tennessee, back into
Missouri, then back into Kentucky, and thence into Tennessee again. So a
mile or two of Missouri sticks over into Tennessee.
The town of New Madrid was looking very unwell; but otherwise unchanged
from its former condition and aspect. Its blocks of frame-houses were
still grouped in the same old flat plain, and environed by the same
old forests. It was as tranquil as formerly, and apparently had neither
grown nor diminished in size. It was said that the recent high water had
invaded it and damaged its looks. This was surprising news; for in low
water the river bank is very high there (fifty feet), and in my day an
overflow had always been considered an impossibility. This present flood
of 1882 Will doubtless be celebrated in the river's history for several
generations before a deluge of like magnitude shall be seen. It put all
the unprotected low lands under water, from Cairo to the mouth; it broke
down the levees in a great many places, on both sides of the river;
and in some regions south, when the flood was at its highest, the
Mississippi was _seventy miles_ wide! a number of lives were lost,
and the destruction of property was fearful. The crops were destroyed,
houses washed away, and shelterless men and cattle forced to take refuge
on scattering elevations here and there in field and forest, and wait
in peril and suffering until the boats put in commission by the national
and local governments and by newspaper enterprise could come and rescue
them. The properties of multitudes of people were under water for
months, and the poorer ones must have starved by the hundred if succor
had not been promptly afforded.{footnote [For a detailed and interesting
description of the great flood, written on board of the New Orleans
_Times-Democrat's_ relief-boat, see Appendix A]} The water had been
falling during a considerable time now, yet as a rule we found the banks
still under water.