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Some slight skirmishing had taken place, but no general forward movement was made until the 14th, when the rattle of small arms, the yells of the savages, and the deep boom of the mortars and howitzers told that the battle was on. All day long the troops continued to advance, slowly, keeping under cover as much as possible, and driving the Indians before them.
If we could, by the exercise of supernatural power, gaze down at these shores as from a bird's-eye point of view, and take them in, with all their stirring incidents, at one glance; if we could see the wrecks, large and small colliers with their four or five hands; emigrant ships with their hundreds of passengers beating and grinding furiously on rocks that appear to rise out of and sink into a sea of foam; if we could witness our lifeboats, with their noble-hearted crews, creeping out of every nook and bay in the very teeth of what seems to be inevitable destruction; if we could witness the hundred deeds of individual daring done by men with bronzed faces and rough garments, who carry their lives habitually in their hands, and think nothing of it; if we could behold the flash of the rockets, and hear the crack of the mortars and the boom of minute guns from John o' Groat's to the Land's End, at the dead and dark hours of night, when dwellers in our inland districts are abed, all ignorant, it may be, or thoughtless, in regard to these things; above all, if we could hear the shrieks of the perishing, the sobs and thanksgivings of the rescued, and the wild cheers of the rescuers; and hear and see all this at one single glance, so that our hearts might be more filled than they are at present with a sense of the terrible dangers of our shores, and the heroism of our men of the coast, it is probable that our prayers for those who "go down to the sea in ships" would be more frequent and fervent, and our respect for those who risk life and limb to save the shipwrecked would be deeper.
On these places the coffee is dried by the glowing heat of the sun, and then shaken in large stone mortars, ten or twenty of which are placed beneath a wooden scaffolding, from which wooden hammers, set in motion by water power, descend into the mortars, and easily crush the husks.
Behind the mortars lay some hundreds of shells, ready loaded, to be used as they might be required; a shell, fired from one of the centre mortars, burst in the muzzle; the fusee recoiled and fell on the loaded shells; these exploded, and communicated with the magazine, which, at that moment, a person had entered for the purpose of bringing out some requisite.
Hence guides of the 4th Gordons led us by Bridge 16 over the Canal and along the track of the Lille Road. It was a dark night, and as we stumbled along in single file, we could see the Towers of Ypres smouldering with a dull red glow to our left, while the salient front line was lit up by bursting shells and trench mortars.
I chanced to come into touch with the record of the preparation of the mortars that were supplied to Grant's army at Cairo. Sometime in the nineties I was sojourning with the late Abram S. Hewitt at his home in Ringwood, New Jersey.
Not that a force marching by land cannot do it alone, but it would be bad economy in war to invest the place with an army so far from heavy guns, mortars, ammunition, and provisions, which can alone reach Shreveport by water. Still, I do not know about General Banks's plans in that event; and whatever they may be, your duty will be to conform, in the most hearty manner.
After giving minute instructions for every movement, it goes on to say that, as the surprise may possibly fail, it will be necessary to send two small mortars and twelve cannon carrying nine-pound balls, "so as to bombard them and endeavour to make Breaches in their walls and then to Storm them."
When all the siege artillery was in position there were forty pieces, of which six were 8-inch sea-coast howitzers on siege carriages, eight 24-pounders, seven 30-pounder Parrotts, four 6-inch rifles, four 9-inch Dahlgren guns, four 8-inch mortars, three 10-inch mortars, and four 13-inch mortars.
He had but little more than 100 men, and early in the engagement was forced to rely entirely upon his casemate ordinance. The Confederate forces numbered about five thousand, with thirty guns and seventeen mortars, and served their guns from the batteries on Mount Pleasant, Cummings Point, and the floating battery.
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