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Although the vessels were anchored, bow and stern, the violence of the sea was such that they frequently crashed into each other, breaking bulwarks, spars, and wheel-houses, and tearing away standing-rigging.
The sea was so phosphorescent that it broke in sheets and flakes of pale bluish flame from the bows and wheel-houses, and out in the dark the waves revealed themselves in flashes and long gleams of fire. One of the officers of the boat came and hung with Mavering over the guard. The weird light from the water was reflected on their faces, and showed them to each other.
The smoke-stacks and wheel-houses were riddled by the bullets of the Confederate sharp-shooters. The decks were covered with rubbish of all kinds, and here and there was a fissure that told of the bursting of some Confederate shell. The paint was blistered, and peeling off, from the effects of the cotton-fire through which the fleet had dashed.
No mill-owner nor his servants, nor any other person, should be allowed to take fish at his weir, or within fifty yards of it. Third. Conservators should be allowed to go into all wheel-races, wheel-houses and tail-goits, and also upon all lands on the banks of Salmon rivers, as well as inspect all cruives, weirs, &c., without being deemed guilty of trespass. Fourth.
But, before sending a vessel through, Porter thought that he would test the accuracy of the Confederate gunners by giving them a dummy to fire at. He took a large flat boat, and built it up with logs and lumber until it looked like a powerful ram. Two huge wheel-houses towered amidships, on each of which was painted, in great, staring letters, "Deluded Rebels, cave in."
The last bell rings the "can't-get-away" folks rush ashore the staging-plank is drawn in some heedless wight has to jump for it the cable is pulled aboard and coiled the engineer's bell tinkles the great wheels revolve, lashing the brown water into foam the steam "whistles" and screams at the boilers, and booms from the 'scape-pipe in regular repetitions neighbouring boats are pressed out of their places their planks cringe and crackle guards are broken, or the slight timbers of wheel-houses, causing a cross-fire of curses between the crews and after some minutes of this pandemoniac confusion, the huge craft clears herself, and rides out upon the broad bosom of the river.
Steamers, from whose spacious saloons the tourist and the bride have watched the picturesque margin of the Hudson, were now black with clusters of rollicking volunteers, who climbed into the yards, and pitched headlong from the wheel-houses. The "grand movement," for which the people had waited so long, and which McClellan had promised so often, was at length to be made.
The seventh ship at Port Hudson, the Mississippi, was a very large side-wheel steamer. On account of the inconvenience presented by the guards of her wheel-houses, she was chosen as the odd one to whom no consort was assigned. Albatross, Lieut.-Com. John E. Hart. B. Richmond, Commander James Alden. b. Genesee, Commander W. H. Macomb. C. Monongahela, Captain J. P. McKinstry. c. Kineo, Lieut.-Com.
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