The earth fell, the rift widened. Down into the breathless tunnel, like wine to the exhausted, came a gust of night air. The long queue of waiting men quivered. The hole in the roof widened.... The workers were now working very cautiously, very quietly. Even in the dead of the night, even well beyond the stockade, even, as they hoped, in the bottom of the gully running down to the river, there might be wakeful ears. The workers made the least possible noise, the hundred and odd waiting prisoners made none at all. Crouched in silence they breathed the night air and the sweat dried upon them.... The hole in the roof became large enough to let a man through. Footholds had already been made along the side of the tunnel. The workers laid down their picks, mounted, and tried their weight upon the edges of the opening. The earth held. “Ready!” breathed Stafford. “McCarthy, you go first.”
McCarthy drew himself up and out of the tunnel. “Now, Lamar!” Lamar followed. The queue moved a step forward. The third man had his hands on the edge of the hole. McCarthy’s form appeared above, blocking the starlight, McCarthy’s face down bent, waxen as the almost burned-out taper which threw against it a little quivering light. McCarthy’s whisper came down. “O my God, my God! We turned and dug obliquely.... We’re still inside the stockade!”
There sounded the discharge of a sentry’s piece, followed by a hallooing and the noise of running feet.
CHAPTER XII
THE SIEGE
Eight gunboats held the river in front of, above, and below the doomed town. Under the leafy Louisiana shore the blue placed seven mortars. These kept up a steady fire upon the city and the river defences. At intervals the gunboats engaged the lower batteries. There was an abandoned line of works which was seized upon by a cloud of blue sharpshooters. These began to pick off men at the grey guns, and traverses had to be built against them. The grey had in the river batteries thirty-one siege guns, and a few pieces of light artillery. Even of these they had eventually to spare guns for the land defences.
At dawn of the twenty-seventh of May began the engagement in which the Cincinnati was sunk. She had fourteen guns, and she opened furiously upon the upper batteries while four gunboats handled the lower. But the upper batteries sunk her; she went down not far from the shore in water that did not quite cover her decks. Her loss was heavy, from the grey shells and from the grey sharpshooters who picked off her men at the portholes. Night after night blue craft gathered around her, trying to take away the fourteen guns, but night after night the upper batteries drove them away. She stayed there, the Cincinnati, heavy and mournful in the smoke-shrouded river. And day after day, and week after week, the seven mortars and all the gunboats launched their thunders against the water batteries and the town beyond.
Three fourths of a rough circle ran the landward defences. There were exterior ditches, eight and ten feet deep, with provision for the infantry, with embrasures and platforms for artillery. Before them were thrown abatis, palisades, entanglements of picket and telegraph wire. The ground was all ridge and hollow; redan and redoubt and lunette occupied the commanding points, and between them ran the rifle-pits. There was much digging yet to be done, and few men and no great supply of entrenching tools with which to do it. Night after night fatigue parties were busy. Behind all the salients they made inner lines for time of need; they built traverses against enfilading fires. So fast did the blue sharpshooters pick off officers and men, as they passed from the works to the camps in the rear, that very soon the grey were forced to contrive covered ways. Through the hot nights laboured already wearied men. The five hundred picks and shovels were shared among the troops. Where they gave out, wooden shovels were contrived and bayonets were used as picks. In the night-time the damage of the day must be somehow repaired. The damage of each day was very great.
SHARPSHOOTERS
The centre of the Confederate line, from the Jackson railroad to the Graveyard road, was held by Forney’s division. General Martin Luther Smith held from the Graveyard road to the river on the north, and made the left. Carter L. Stevenson’s division held from the railroad to the Warrenton road and the river south, and formed the right. Behind Forney lay in reserve Bowen with his Missourians and Waul’s Texas Legion. Counting the three thousand and more in hospital, there were twenty-eight thousand men defending Vicksburg. They were all needed. Thrice the number would have found work to do.