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Updated: June 4, 2025
In flush times, just after the war, I was taking a lot of race-horses over to Mobile, and had got them all nicely quartered on the boat and was taking a smoke on the boiler-deck, when a stranger approached me. "Are you the gentleman who brought those horses over from New Orleans?" "Yes, sir." "There is one that I would like to buy." "And that one?" "The pacing horse."
In the forward part of the cabin there was a bar, a stove, a table, and a placard of rules, forbidding smoking, gambling, or swearing in the cabin, and a close company of drinkers, smokers, card-players, and constant swearers. I went out, and stepped down to the boiler-deck.
I saw at the same time two steamers coming from the Columbus side towards the west shore, above us, black or gray with soldiers from boiler-deck to roof. Some of my men were engaged in firing from captured guns at empty steamers down the river, out of range, cheering at every shot. I tried to get them to turn their guns upon the loaded steamers above and not so far away. My efforts were in vain.
The crowd massed themselves against the boiler-deck railings, leaning over and staring into the gloom; and every faint and fainter cry wrung from them such words as, 'Ah, poor fellow, poor fellow! is there no way to save him? But still the cries held out, and drew nearer, and presently the voice said pluckily 'I can make it! Stand by with a rope! What a rousing cheer they gave him!
It was not, of course, intended that she should go into action; but, in order that she might be able to defend herself against the guerrillas, which infested the river between Cairo and Helena, she mounted a twelve-pound howitzer on her boiler-deck, and was well supplied with muskets. Her destination was Helena.
I was looking down upon the boiler-deck for it appeared to me that the loud words that preceded the reports had issued thence, though I also thought that the shots had been fired at some point nearer. Most of the people had gone out by the side entrances, and were standing over the gangways, so that I was alone in the darkness, or nearly so.
Forbidden to gather even in pairs, they had yet moved freely about, often passing each other closely enough to exchange piecemeal counsels unnoticed, and all at once, at a tap of the boat's bell had sprung, man for man, upon their keepers and instantly were masters of them, of them, of their arms stacked on the boiler-deck and of the steamboat, which they had promptly run ashore on the East Louisiana side and burned.
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