“The Spitfire will catch her!” says the pilot. A wave of the hand, and the Spitfire is alongside, running up like a dog to its master. Lieutenant Bishop, Pilot Bixby, and a gun crew jump on board the tug, which carries a boat howitzer. Away they go, the tug puffing and wheezing, as if it had the asthma.
“Through the chute!” shouts Captain Phelps. Chute is a French word, meaning a narrow passage, not the main channel of the river. The Sovereign is in the main channel, but the Spitfire has the shortest distance. The tug cuts the water like a knife. She comes out just astern of the steamer.
Bang! goes the howitzer. The shot falls short. Bang! again in a twinkling. Better. Bang! It goes over the Sovereign.
“Hurrah! Bishop will get her!” The crews of the gunboats dance with delight, and swing their caps. Bang! Right through her cabin. The Sovereign turns towards the shore, and runs plump against the bank. The crew, all but the cook, take to the woods, and the steamer is ours.
It would astonish you to see how fast a well-drilled boat’s-crew can load and fire a howitzer. Commodore Foote informed me that, when he was in the China Sea, he was attacked by the natives, and his boat’s-crew fired four times a minute!
The chase for the Sovereign was very exciting,—more so than any horse-race I ever saw.
The crew on board the Sovereign had been stopping at all the farm-houses along the river, setting fire to the cotton on the plantations. They did it in the name of the Confederate government, that it might not fall into the hands of the Yankees. In a great many places they had rolled it into the river, and the stream was covered with white flakes. The bushes were lined with it.
As soon as the people along the banks saw the Federal steamboats, they went to work to save their property. Some of them professed to be Union men. I conversed with an old man, who was lame, and could hardly hobble round. He spoke bitterly against Jeff Davis for burning his cotton and stealing all his property.
While descending the river, we saw a canoe, containing two men, push out from a thick canebrake. They came up to the Benton. We thought they were Rebels, at first, but soon saw they were two pilots belonging to the fleet, who had started the day before for Vicksburg, to pilot Commodore Farragut’s fleet to Memphis. They had been concealed during the day, not daring to move. The evacuation of Fort Pillow rendered it unnecessary for them to continue the voyage. They said that eight Rebel gunboats were a short distance below us.
We moved on slowly, and came to anchor about nine o’clock, near a place called by all the rivermen Paddy’s Hen and Chickens, about two miles above Memphis.