"All honor to the brave citizens of New Orleans. They have shown me how I ought to act in this emergency," said Captain Randolph on the morning the startling news came that some of the victorious Union fleet had steamed up the river. He posted for his room the moment he heard of it, and when he came down he was dressed in his uniform and wore his glittering sword by his side.
"Now take those things off and don't make a fool of yourself," said Mr. Randolph, who had told his wife over and over again that from the bottom of his heart he wished he had never had anything to do with the Home Guards.
"Don't be rash, my dear," said his mother in tones more befitting the occasion. "What are you going to do?"
"I shall assemble my company and place myself in a strong position between here and Baton Rouge, and stand ready to resist the enemy's advance upon Mooreville," replied Tom. "The Federal General Butler has more than 100,000 men, and can easily spare some of them long enough to make our capital a heap of ashes; but the Governor shall hear that I harassed them while they were doing it, as our own Marion and his bold men used to harass the Redcoats."
Those who were best acquainted with Tom Randolph knew that he would not have gone one step toward Baton Rouge if he had not had the best of reasons for believing that there were no troops at hand to take possession of the city after the war ships had captured it; but although Tom hinted as much to the members of his company whom he tried to rally to the defence of their hearth-stones, he could not induce more than a handful of them to turn out. It did not require very much courage to rob Union men who had previously been deprived of their weapons, but facing blue-jackets who were likely to have loaded muskets in their hands was a more serious matter. The excuses the Home Guards made for refusing to follow their captain were of the flimsiest kind; but, all the same, they wouldn't go, and Tom finally rode away with only a baker's dozen of men at his heels. They arrived within sight of the spires of the city on the same day that Captain Palmer's sailors hoisted the Union flag over the arsenal, and might perhaps have witnessed the ceremony if they had gone a mile or two farther down the road; but Captain Tom could not uncover Mooreville even for the sake of saving the capital of his State. He did not even venture near enough to the Mississippi to see the Iroquois' topmasts; but he went closer to the enemy than the cowards who remained at home, and that was something to be proud of.
Captain Tom slept in a planter's house that night, while his men bunked in the stables and corn cribs and under the trees in the yard, and the next morning made a wide detour to the river above the city with no other object in view than to be able to say, when he went home, that he had been there. If he had known what he was going to see and experience when he reached the river it isn't likely that he would have gone in that direction at all; for he halted his men behind the levee just in time to see a monster war vessel steaming leisurely up the swift, muddy current of the Mississippi. She was the blackest, ugliest looking thing that Tom's eyes had ever rested on, and the queerest sensations came over him as he gazed at her. It was not a cold day, but Tom shivered violently, and tasted something in his mouth that reminded him of salt.
"By gum! There's one of them things now. Let's try a whack at her. What do you say, boys?"
Tom had been on the point of giving the signal for retreat, or trying to give it, but this astounding and reckless proposition staggered him so that he could not open his mouth. The man who made it showed that he was in earnest by swinging himself from his horse and advancing on all fours toward the levee, dragging his rifle along the ground at his side. In less time than it takes to tell it he and all his companions were lying prone behind the levee, using it as a breastwork, and Captain Tom sat in his saddle looking on like one in a dream. When they were all in position one of the Home Guards set up a warwhoop, a straggling fire ran along the top of the levee and bullets and buckshot went whistling toward the vessel. There were several men on her deck and around the wheel-house, and although Tom did not see any of them fall he did see that they were badly frightened, for they ran in all directions, and an instant later there was not one of them to be seen. The Home Guards yelled triumphantly and turned on their backs behind their breastwork to reload their guns. Then Tom managed to find his voice; but it sounded so strangely that he hardly knew whether it belonged to him or not.
"That's the way to make the Yankees hunt their holes," he said, in trembling tones. "Give it to them again! Cut their old tub to pieces, my brave——"