“I found this man in the swamp, sir.  He has a message from the Admiral—­”

The General tore open the roll and took from it a piece of tissue paper which he spread out and held under the candle.  He turned to a staff officer who had jumped from his bed and was hurrying into his coat.

“Porter’s surrounded,” he said.  The order came in a flash.  “Kilby Smith and all men here across creek to relief at once.  I’ll take canoe through bayou to Hill’s and hurry reenforcements.”

The staff officer paused, his hand on the latch of the door.

“But your escort, General.  You’re not going through that sewer in a canoe without an escort!”

“I guess they won’t look for a needle in that haystack,” the General answered.  For a brief second he eyed the lieutenant.  “Get back to your regiment, Brice, if you want to go,” he said.

Stephen saluted and went out.  All through the painful march that followed, though soaked in swamp water and bruised by cypress knees, he thought of Sherman in his canoe, winding unprotected through the black labyrinth, risking his life that more men might be brought to the rescue of the gunboats.

The story of that rescue has been told most graphically by Sherman himself.  How he picked up the men at work on the bayou and marched them on a coal barge; how he hitched the barge to a navy tug; how he met the little transport with a fresh load of troops, and Captain Elijah Brent’s reply when the General asked if he would follow him.  “As long as the boat holds together, General.”  And he kept his word.  The boughs hammered at the smoke-pipes until they went by the board, and the pilothouse fell like a pack of cards on the deck before they had gone three miles and a half.  Then the indomitable Sherman disembarked, a lighted candle in his hand, and led a stiff march through thicket and swamp and breast-deep backwater, where the little drummer boys carried their drums on their heads.  At length, when they were come to some Indian mounds, they found a picket of three, companies of the force which had reached the flat the day before, and had been sent down to prevent the enemy from obstructing further the stream below the fleet.

“The Admiral’s in a bad way, sir,” said the Colonel who rode up to meet the General.  “He’s landlocked.  Those clumsy ironclads of his can’t move backward or forward, and the Rebs have been peppering him for two days.”

Just then a fusillade broke from the thickets, nipping the branches from the cottonwoods about them.

“Form your line,” said the General.  “Drive ’em out.”

The force swept forward, with the three picket companies in the swamp on the right.  And presently they came in sight of the shapeless ironclads with their funnels belching smoke, a most remarkable spectacle.  How Porter had pushed them there was one of the miracles of the war.