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On our return to camp we found preparations on foot for a move to the front, and although we left camp by eleven o'clock that night not more than three or four miles was traveled by daylight. In the darkness one of our twenty-pounders went over a thirty-foot embankment, carrying the drivers and eight horses into the mud and water at its base.
He said it was very true; and then began to praise the life, and tell what a pleasure it was to get on shore with money in his pocket, and spend it like a man, and buy apples, and swagger, and surprise what he called stick-in-the-mud boys. "And then it's not all as bad as that," says he; "there's worse off than me: there's the twenty-pounders. O, laws! you should see them taking on.
The enemy graped the field right and left, and had a decided advantage in the forenoon when their long range twenty-pounders played havoc with our advancing and retreating columns, while our small four and six-pounders could not reach their batteries.
Some of Major Cavender's guns were twenty-pounders. Three pieces in McAllister's battery were twenty-four pound howitzers. McClernand's division, preceded by the Fourth Illinois cavalry, marched in advance on both roads. No opposition was encountered before reaching the pickets in front of Donelson. The advance came in sight of the fort about noon.
I had no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word of Ransome's the twenty-pounders.
I had no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word of Ransome's the twenty-pounders.
I had no thought where they were taking me; only looked here and there for the appearance of a ship; and there ran the while in my head a word of Ransome's the TWENTY-POUNDERS. If I were to be exposed a second time to that same former danger of the plantations, I judged it must turn ill with me; there was no second Alan; and no second shipwreck and spare yard to be expected now; and I saw myself hoe tobacco under the whip's lash.
As the National lines were drifting back toward the landing, Colonel Webster, of General Grant's staff, gathered all the artillery within reach Major Cavender's six twenty-pounders, Silversparre's twenty-pound Parrotts, and some light batteries on a commanding position from a quarter to half a mile from the landing. Immediately above the landing a wide and deep ravine opens to the river.
Onward they came down the steep bank opposite, into the ravine. The Union batteries were ready for them, Captain Silversparre with his twenty-pounders, Captain Richardson and Captain Russell with their howitzers, Captain Stone with his ten-pounders, Captain Taylor, Captain Dresser, Captain Willard, and Lieutenant Edwards, sixty or more cannon in all.
Allan stretched himself beneath a black gum at the side of the road. Everywhere was a rolling smoke, everywhere terrific sound. A battery thundered by at a gallop, six horses to each gun, straining, red-nostrilled, fiery-eyed. It struck across a corner of the plain. Over it burst the shells, twelve-pounders twenty-pounders. A horse went down the drivers cut the traces.
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