A gun-boat had been ordered up the river to help in the bombardment. The gun-boat mistook us for Fort Harrison and opened upon our defenceless rear. Its shells were about the size and shape of a street lamp, and they wrought fearful havoc among us.
The Cradle Captain had charge of the signal operator—a stalwart mountaineer of six feet four or so.
The Cradle Captain ordered him to mount upon the glacis and signal the ship to cease firing. The man was not a coward; but the fire was terrific. He hesitated. That Cradle Captain leaped like a cat upon the glacis, which the shells were splitting every second. He pulled out two pistols. He presented one at each side of the mountaineer’s head. Then in a little, childish, piping voice he said: “Get up here and do your duty, or I’ll blow your brains out.”
We rejoiced that the lead, which at that moment laid the little soldier low, came from the enemy’s guns, and not from our own mistaken comrades. The Cradle Captain was glad, too, for as he was carried away on a litter, he laughed out between groans: “It wasn’t our men that did it, for I had made that hulking idiot get in that signal all right, anyhow.”
“Get up here and do your duty.”
WHO IS RUSSELL?
I SAW him for the first time in 1862.
We were stationed on the coast of South Carolina, and never was there an idler set of soldiers than we.
We were in the midst of a great war, it is true, and ours was a fighting battery with dates on its battle banner; but on the coast we had literally nothing to do. The position of our camp was determined by military geography, and it could not be changed. A fight was possible any day, and now and then a fight came. But we knew in advance precisely where it must be waged, and until our foemen chose to bring it about, we had no occasion for marching or bivouacking. They were on the sea islands. We were on the mainland. We had no means of crossing to the islands. They could cross to the mainland whenever they pleased. When they came, it was our business to meet them and keep them from reaching the line of railroad along the coast.