Night fell to the music of the paddles, to the scent of the officers’ cigars, to the blood-red vomit of the tall stacks and the smoky flame of the torches.  Then Christmas Day dawned, and there was Vicksburg lifted two hundred feet above the fever swamps, her court-house shining in the morning sun.  Vicksburg, the well-nigh impregnable key to America’s highway.  When old Vick made his plantation on the Walnut Hills, he chose a site for a fortress of the future Confederacy that Vauban would have delighted in.

Yes, there were the Walnut Hills, high bluffs separated from the Mississippi by tangled streams and bayous, and on their crests the Parrotts scowled.  It was a queer Christmas Day indeed, bright and warm; no snow, no turkeys nor mince pies, no wine, but just hardtack and bacon and foaming brown water.

On the morrow the ill-assorted fleet struggled up the sluggish Yazoo, past impenetrable forests where the cypress clutched at the keels, past long-deserted cotton fields, until it came at last to the black ruins of a home.  In due time the great army was landed.  It spread out by brigade and division and regiment and company, the men splashing and paddling through the Chickasaw and the swamps toward the bluffs.  The Parrotts began to roar.  A certain regiment, boldly led, crossed the bayou at a narrow place and swept resistless across the sodden fields to where the bank was steepest.  The fire from the battery scorched the hair of their heads.  But there they stayed, scooping out the yellow clay with torn hands, while the Parrotts, with lowered muzzles, ploughed the slope with shells.  There they stayed, while the blue lines quivered and fell back through the forests on that short winter’s afternoon, dragging their wounded from the stagnant waters.  But many were left to die in agony in the solitude.

Like a tall emblem of energy, General Sherman stood watching the attack and repulse, his eyes ever alert.  He paid no heed to the shells which tore the limbs from the trees about him, or sent the swamp water in thick spray over his staff.  Now and again a sharp word broke from his lips, a forceful home thrust at one of the leaders of his columns.

“What regiment stayed under the bank?”

“Sixth Missouri, General,” said an aide, promptly.

The General sat late in the Admiral’s gunboat that night, but when he returned to his cabin in the Forest Queen, he called for a list of officers of the Sixth Missouri.  His finger slipping down the roll paused at a name among the new second lieutenants.

“Did the boys get back?” he asked.  “Yes, General, when it fell dark.”

“Let me see the casualties,—­quick.”

That night a fog rolled up from the swamps, and in the morning jack-staff was hid from pilot-house.  Before the attack could be renewed, a political general came down the river with a letter in his pocket from Washington, by virtue of which he took possession of the three army core, and their chief, subpoenaed the fleet and the Admiral, and went off to capture Arkansas Post.