GUN-BOATS--DISASTER TO THE MOUND CITY.
|On the night of the ninth, Harry and Jack had an adventure of a new
sort, which happily turned out to be bloodless.
The greater part of the baggage-wagons failed to come up until late in
the evening, and it became necessary for the soldiers to bivouac without
shelter, as the little town was not equal to their accommodation. Our
young friends picketed their horses, having first cut a quantity of
green oats from a field near by, with which they fed the faithful
animals.
Then they took two or three bundles of the oats to lie upon and
flattered themselves that they would make a comfortable bed, or one
which would certainly be an improvement upon the bare ground. With a
thin layer on the ground and a good-sized bundle for their pillows, they
went to sleep in very short order.
They were sleeping soundly, and possibly dreaming of home and friends,
when they were suddenly and rudely awakened. The night was dark and
their first thought was that they had been surprised by the enemy.
There was a long and very dark form standing over Harry and another over
Jack, and each of the assailants seemed to be looking for the throat of
his victim.
Harry gave his disturber a heavy blow with his fist, which sent him
reeling over upon the soldier who was lying close by and snoring loudly.
The snoring stopped at once, as the fall of the heavy body waked the
soldier, who sprang to his feet and reached for his gun. He had the
impulse to shoot, but did not know in what direction to fire.
Jack grappled with his enemy, and there was a struggle which may be said
to have resulted in victory for both. Jack did not succeed in holding
down his assailant, as the latter slipped through his grasp and made
his escape. But the youth saved his life and was not, in fact, injured
further than a few slight contusions and abrasions.
Another soldier who had been awakened drew his bayonet, and as one of
the attacking force rushed past him the man gave a well-directed prod
with the weapon, which stretched the intruder on the ground. It also
roused a deafening squeal, that indicated the character of the creators
of the disturbance.
It seems that a drove of half-wild pigs had come out of the forest, on
the lookout for something to eat. In the southern states pigs generally
run at large, being called up occasionally by means of a horn, to be
fed and selected for slaughter or other purposes. As they are always
fed when summoned by the horn, they soon learn to come to its call; but
sometimes, when the summonses are infrequent, they grow so wild that
they do not heed the sound. Then they have to be chased up, and the work
of driving them in is no small affair.
Very often they remain in the woods during the day and come around
at night to the neighborhood of the dwellings in search of food. The
southern pigs are like those of any other part of the country, or of the
world, for that matter, as they are gifted with free appetites and are
not over particular about their food as long as it is something edible.
In their nocturnal ramble this drove under consideration had come upon
the sleeping-place of our young friends. Having scented the oats which
the boys had taken to sleep upon, the animals rushed in without ceremony
and proceeded to devour the succulent grain without asking permission of
those who were then in possession. The assault of two of the pigs
upon the bundles which formed the pillows of Harry and Jack gave the
impression that the marauders were seeking to reach the throats of their
victims, and their forms in the darkness were not unlike those of men
stooping forward to attack the slumberers. Two of the pigs paid for the
assault with their lives, and formed a material addition to the bill of
fare of the men whose slumbers they had broken. There was little sleep
in the group for the rest of the night, their hearty laughter over the
incident, and speculations as to whether the rest of the pigs would come
back, having effectually driven sleep from their eyelids.
The presence of the pigs having been discovered, a horn was blown the
next morning and turned to good advantage. Pigs to the number of a
hundred or more came trooping out of the forest, and were enticed into
a yard which had been hastily constructed by some of the soldiers. When
they ceased coming the yard was closed, and the soldiers said afterwards
that pork roasted over a campfire formed an excellent substitute for
other articles of food when the others could n't be had.
The rumor of the granting of free-papers to the negroes who had been
working on the fortifications or helped to fell timber to obstruct the
march of the army was rapidly spread about Clarendon, and in a few hours
the colored population for miles around seemed to have gathered there.
All declared they had been doing the forbidden work, and all, as far
as it was possible to grant them in the limited time, received their
papers.
“If we had only known it,” said Harry to Jack, when they learned the
state of affairs, “you and I would have tried to get through to bring
news to the fleet, and we would have got through somehow. We might have
taken a skiff and paddled down in the night, and we would have rigged
it up like a log, so that it would have required very sharp eyes to
discover that it was anything else than an ordinary log drifting with
the current. But there's no use crying over spilt milk, as the old
saw has it, and so we need n't waste the time over planning for past
performances. But I'd have given a good deal to have known of this in
time.”
Jack agreed with him, and after a very brief talk on the subject they
turned their attention to other matters.
There was no alternative for the army but to make the best of its way to
Helena, on the Mississippi, sixty or sixty-five miles away. The tenth of
July was spent at Clarendon, and at four o'clock on the morning of the
eleventh General Washburne, with two thousand five hundred cavalry and
six mountain howitzers, started on a forced march for the banks of the
great river. They followed the old military road between Little Rock and
Helena. It proved to be a very good road, though there were several bad
places at the crossings of small streams. With a few exceptions, and
those doing no harm, not a shot was fired at them along the whole of the
route, all the forces of the enemy having been withdrawn to the defense
of the White river or to points further back in the interior of the
state.
Harry and Jack were allowed to accompany General Washburne's advance, as
it was thought they might be useful in case there was any scouting to be
done or any foraging for provisions, but as the march was a forced one
there was no time for anything of the sort, and they had nothing to do
but stick to the column and keep their horses in the road.
About nine o'clock in the forenoon of the twelfth the foremost of
the soldiers rose in their stirrups and gave a loud cheer, which was
speedily carried along the whole line. Cheer upon cheer followed, no one
being told the cause, but everybody realizing that the end of the long
march was near. The spires of the churches of Helena were soon afterward
in full view, and beyond them gleamed the waters of the Mississippi,
reflecting the rays of the summer sun.
Harry and Jack were among the loudest of the cheerers, as they realized
that, for the present, at any rate, their wanderings in the wilds of
Arkansas were at an end. They were weary with the almost unbroken ride
of twenty-eight hours, covered with the dust that rose in clouds from
the dry road, and suffering the pangs of hunger and thirst, but no worse
in that respect than all those about them. But with all their weariness
and hunger, and through all the dust that covered them, their hearts
swelled with joy, and they shouted themselves hoarse over the sight of
the great river of the West.
But now came a new difficulty. Helena had not been occupied by union
troops, and there was no one there to welcome them. The gun-boat fleet
had called there and agreed with the local authorities that the town
should not be harmed as long as no outrages were perpetrated on passing
steamboats. The agreement had been kept, and though several bands
of bushwhackers had dropped in to see their friends, they had been
restrained from making any attacks or otherwise disturbing the peace.
The inhabitants were not particularly loyal toward the government, but
they had heard the fate of several places where boats had been fired
upon, and had sufficient influence to keep their bushwhacking friends
quiet.
As the advance of General Washburne's cavalry entered the town, several
men, who had been loitering in front of one of the stores, made haste to
mount their horses and get away. A few shots were fired at them, but no
harm was done, and no attempt was made to pursue them. In a little
while the whole force of cavalry had reached the river bank, and the
Mississippi was scanned up and down to discover a steamboat.
General Washburne hoped there would be a gun-boat with which he could
communicate, but no gun-boat was in sight. Soon the smoke of a steamboat
was seen below the town, around a bend of the river, and in due time she
came in sight, slowly stemming the powerful current. It was an ordinary
transport, quite incapable of defense, and the general quickly made up
his mind to stop her by friendly means if he could, or by force if he
must.
As the steamer came in front of Helena flags were waved again and again,
but the boat paid no attention to them. Then a shot was fired across her
bows to warn her to stop, but this had no effect; another shot followed,
and then another, aimed like the first, so as not to harm the boat, but
to make those on board believe that something serious would happen soon
unless she came to a halt. Seeing there was no escape from the supposed
rebels, the pilot headed the boat for the bank and ran in. A dozen or
more soldiers were on her deck with their guns ready for business, but
they soon perceived that resistance to such a force would be useless.
They prepared to surrender and make the best of their misfortune. But
before the gangplank had been run out one of the shrewdest of them
observed that the formidable force was habited in the union uniform,
though it was so sadly covered with dust that it could easily be
mistaken for the confederate gray.
An officer who was among the passengers brought a field-glass to bear
on the party on the bank. He was an old friend of Captain Winslow, the
quartermaster of General Curtis's army, and was not long in making him
out, in spite of the dust that covered him and his generally bedraggled
appearance after his long ride. Holding aside his glass, he shouted:
“Is Captain Winslow there?”
“Here I am,” was the reply, “and here are the rest of us.”
“All right, pilot,” said the officer; “you're safe enough now. You're
captured by our friends.”
In a few minutes the boat had been made fast to the shore, and General
Washburne came on board accompanied by Captain Winslow, Captain Noble,
of General Curtis's staff, and several other officers. There was
a recognition of old friends and introductions all around. The new
arrivals were treated to the best the steamer afforded, and the officer
who had charge of the boat asked what they could do for the weary and
dusty crowd.
“Give us whatever provisions you can spare,” said General Washburne,
“and then hurry up to Memphis as fast as you can with Captains Winslow
and Noble. They 'll get supplies for us and have them shipped down here
to meet the army by the time it arrives.”
The boat was not well provided with stores, as she had no occasion for
anything beyond sufficient to feed her company to Memphis, but
whatever she had was quickly rolled on the bank and handed over to the
quartermaster of the division. When this had been done she immediately
steamed away for Memphis, ninety miles up the river. She was obliged to
lie at anchor during the night, owing to a dense fog, and did not reach
Memphis until the following forenoon.
Supplies were immediately shipped to Helena, and by the morning of the
fourteenth they were piled on the bank--a welcome sight to the soldiers,
that marched in as closely behind the cavalry as it was possible for
infantry to follow. The march from Clarendon was accomplished in little
more than two days, and not a wagon was lost or left behind. By the
evening of the thirteenth all the divisions had arrived, and anxiously
waited the provisions which came to them on the following morning.
Hundreds of hands were ready to assist in the landing, and rarely has a
steamboat discharged her cargo with greater celerity.
The column was followed by a great number of negroes, who feared the
treatment they would receive from their masters after the departure of
the union forces from Clarendon. At one time it was remarked that there
were more negroes than white men in Helena, and the support of
the colored population became a matter of serious consequence. The
difficulty was partially solved a few months later, when it was decided
to enlist negroes as soldiers, and several regiments of them were formed
for infantry and cavalry service. Thousands of able-bodied citizens of
African descent were enrolled in the army, and though they had their
defects they did credit to themselves, besides exasperating the rebels
to an unwonted degree. Many of the rebel officers subsequently declared
that their greatest mistake was that they did not arm their negroes
early in the war, and promise to give them their freedom at the end.
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