On the second day of Barker’s stay in Vicksburg, the bombardment, beginning at daylight, was especially heavy. Many of the people of Vicksburg had become so accustomed to the rushing and exploding of the shells that they gathered at various high points to watch the shells fly and drop.
Barker tried to induce Tatanka to go with him to Sky Parlor Hill, a high point where a good many people had assembled, but Tatanka would not come.
He sat in front of his cave and whenever he saw or heard a shell, he ducked into the cave as the boys expressed it.
“No, my friend,” he said to Barker. “If you said I should fight Chippewas on Sky Parlor Hill, I would come, but of the big roaring shells I am afraid.”
It was in vain that Barker and the boys explained to him that the mortars were not shooting at Sky Parlor Hill, and that the big guns could not aim at any one person. He wouldn’t leave the entrance of the cave.
“You go and come back and tell me,” he said. “I like this place better than Sky Parlor Hill. May be I shall go with you to-morrow.”
At night the mortar shells with their fuses made a wonderful display of grim fireworks. After the shells rose to the greatest height, they fell so rapidly that a trail of fire seemed to be following them. Generally when a shell struck the ground or a building, it exploded, but some remained dead, owing to imperfect fuses, like a fire-cracker that does not go off.
A district in which the shells fell was at once deserted; and some caves sold very cheap, because their owners did not consider them safe.
The Parrott shells fired from the besieging batteries were more feared and did more damage than the mortar shells thrown by the fleet. One of those came with a horrid shriek and buried itself in the ground in front of the cave in which the boys and their parents were eating their supper. Although the shell did not explode, Tatanka was so scared by it that for the rest of the evening, he would not leave his cave at all.
The next morning, through the courtesy of an officer, Barker received permission for himself and his company to visit the quarters of the officer, a few hundred yards in the rear of the Confederate fortifications.