We'll be gay and happy still!"
And we will be happy in spite of Yankee guns! Only—my dear This, That, and the Other, at Port Hudson, how I pray for your safety! God spare our brave soldiers, and lead them to victory! I write, touch my guitar, talk, pick lint, and pray so rapidly that it is hard to say which is my occupation. I sent Frank some lint the other day, and a bundle of it for Mr. Halsey is by me. Hope neither will need it! But to my work again!
Half-past One o'clock, a.m.
It has come at last! What an awful sound! I thought I had heard a bombardment before; but Baton Rouge was child's play compared to this. At half-past eleven came the first gun—at least the first I heard, and I hardly think it could have commenced many moments before. Instantly I had my hand on Miriam, and at my first exclamation, Mrs. Badger and Anna answered. All three sprang to their feet to dress, while all four of us prayed aloud. Such an incessant roar! And at every report the house shaking so, and we thinking of our dear soldiers, the dead and dying, and crying aloud for God's blessing on them, and defeat and overthrow to their enemies. That dreadful roar! I can't think fast enough. They are too quick to be counted. We have all been in Mrs. Carter's room, from the last window of which we can see the incessant flash of the guns and the great shooting stars of flame, which must be the hot shot of the enemy. There is a burning house in the distance, the second one we have seen to-night. For Yankees can't prosper unless they are pillaging honest people. Already they have stripped all on their road of cattle, mules, and negroes.
Gathered in a knot within and without the window, we six women up here watched in the faint starlight the flashes from the guns, and silently wondered which of our friends were lying stiff and dead, and then, shuddering at the thought, betook ourselves to silent prayer. I think we know what it is to "wrestle with God in prayer"; we had but one thought. Yet for women, we took it almost too coolly. No tears, no cries, no fear, though for the first five minutes everybody's teeth chattered violently. Mrs. Carter had her husband in Fenner's battery, the hottest place if they are attacked by the land force, and yet to my unspeakable relief she betrayed no more emotion than we who had only friends there. We know absolutely nothing; when does one ever know anything in the country? But we presume that this is an engagement between our batteries and the gunboats attempting to run the blockade.
Firing has slackened considerably. All are to lie down already dressed; but being in my nightgown from necessity, I shall go to sleep, though we may expect at any instant to hear the tramp of Yankee cavalry in the yard.
Sunday, March 15th.
To my unspeakable surprise, I waked up this morning and found myself alive. Once satisfied of that, and assuring myself of intense silence in the place of the great guns which rocked me to sleep about half-past two this morning, I began to doubt that I had heard any disturbance in the night, and to believe I had written a dream within a dream, and that no bombardment had occurred; but all corroborate my statement, so it must be true, and this portentous silence is only the calm before the storm. I am half afraid the land force won't attack. We can beat them if they do; but suppose they lay siege to Port Hudson and starve us out? That is the only way they can conquer.
We hear nothing still that is reliable.
Just before daylight there was a terrific explosion which electrified every one save myself. I was sleeping so soundly that I did not hear anything of it, though Mrs. Badger says that when she sprang up and called me, I talked very rationally about it, and asked what it could possibly be. Thought that I had ceased talking in my sleep. Miriam was quite eloquent in her dreams before the attack, crying aloud, "See! See! What do I behold?" as though she were witnessing a rehearsal of the scene to follow.