Dick by day even more than by night recognized the difficulty of the task. Before them flowed the vast swift current of the Mississippi, gleaming now in the sunshine, and beyond were the frowning bluffs, crested and ringed with cannon. Grant had with him twenty thousand men and his seven gunboats, and Bowen, eight thousand troops. But if the affair lasted long other Southern armies would surely come.
Dick and his comrades had little to do but watch and thousands watched with them. When the sun was fully risen the seven boats steamed out in two groups, four farther down the river in order to attack the lower batteries, while the other three up the stream would launch their fire against those on the summit.
He watched the crest of the cliffs. He saw plainly through his glasses the muzzles of cannon and men moving about the batteries. Then there was a sudden blaze of fire and column of smoke and a shell struck in the water near one of the gunboats. The boat replied and its comrades also sent shot and shell toward the frowning summit. Then the batteries, both lower and upper, replied with full vigor and all the cliffs were wrapped in fire and smoke.
The boats steamed in closer and closer, pouring an incessant fire from their heavy guns, and both rings of batteries on the cliffs responded. The water of the river spouted up in innumerable little geysers and now and then a boat was struck. Over both cliffs and river a great cloud of smoke lowered. It grew so dense that Dick and his comrades, watching with eagerness, were unable to tell much of what was happening.
Yet as the smoke lifted or was shot through with the blaze of cannon fire they saw that their prophecies were coming true. The boats in water too deep for anchorage were caught in the powerful eddies and their captains had to show their best seamanship while they steamed back and forth.
The battle between ship and shore went on for a long time. It seemed at last to the watching Union soldiers that the fire from the lower line of batteries was diminishing.
“We're making some way,” said Warner.
“It looks like it,” said Dick. “Their lower batteries are not so well protected as the upper.”
“If we were only over there, helping with our own guns.”
“But there's a big river in between, and we've got to leave it to the boats for to-day, anyhow.”