puzzled over was the explosion of the powder ship, and that they chanced to be in such close proximity to a form of attack which, if only half its expected success had attended it, would have incidently blown themselves into space.

"On the following morning, that of Christmas Eve, 1864, when the sky was clear and the sea blue, with just enough westerly breeze to ripple

the surface of the ocean and stiffen out the dancing flags overhead, the splendid fleet steamed slowly in for the attack. In stately line of battle, three abreast, with the iron-clads in the van and the frigates, sloops of war and gunboats, all trimmed for action, ranged behind, the fifty-five vessels of the squadron silently advanced. Inside the fort, from the navy guns, now manned by the Chickamauga's people, all the way up the quarter mile of sand mounds composing the sea face, and away back

along the more elevated land face which turned off at right angles till it met the marsh and river at the rear, one could see the motionless groups of grey-uniformed gunners standing silently at the barbette guns, no movement showing anywhere, except in the flags which still fluttered gaily in the wind.

"Presently the formidable Ironsides took up her desired position, and rounding slightly, jetted out a puff of heavy smoke from one of her bow ports. This, with the screaming, whizzing shell which followed, gave the signal for the heaviest artillery battle of modern times to begin its two days of turmoil.

'At the first shot from the enemy, the fort began its response. The rigid groups unlocked, and a lively, rattling interchange of fire opened between the hundreds of guns of the fleet and the fifty odd pieces perched on the sand mounds of the fortress. What with the continuous roar of the firing, and the scarcely frequent reports of bursting shell, the aggregate noise was not unlike that of a rolling, volleying, long-sustained thunder storm. It continued throughout the day till, with the setting in of the early winter twilight, the fleet hauled off and left the fort to recoup its damages and wonder at the shower of shell fragments and pit-holes so plentifully besprinkling its spacious surface that turbulent Christmas Eve. The Chickamauga detachment had found themselves in an unfinished battery, where the incomplete sand mounds, or traverses between the guns, left them somewhat exposed to a raking fire, but they were not without the satisfaction of seeing more than one or two of their chilled bolts and big shells knock a shower of splinters from the wooden ships abreast of the position. An able seaman named Higgins had been the first to figure in the list of casualties. Early in the day he found his left leg spinning away from him across the sand plain before a bursting shell. Later, other mishaps here and there occurred, and in the afternoon a shell burst in the battery of gun No. 1, which sent a five-pound fragment through the shoulder of a sailor, and at the same moment bestowed a crack on the knee to the officer in charge. It had not been deemed expedient to fire the heavy Brooke guns of the navy detachment oftener than at fifteenminute intervals, by way of saving undue exposure of the guns' crews, and also avoiding heating the pieces; and so, between the discharges, and while crouching in comparative safety under the sand mounds, ample opportunity was found to watch the antics of the hostile missiles showered into the fort. These were of all sorts and sizes, from the big fifteen-inch spherical shot or shell, and the 100-pounder rifled Parrotts, down through the list, and the whiz or whistle of each variety seemed to strike a different and more vicious note. Occasionally a spherical shell, after it had passed safely by, and was nearly spent, exploded with its base turned towards the battery, the result being to toss its bottom-end back among the unprotected gunners, and curiously enough one of these bits delivered a highly-condensed temperance lecture by knocking a bottle of grog just then served out to the sailors, from the hands of the man engaged in taking the first pull. The sympathy of the blue jackets was not addressed to the unfortunate sailor who held the bottle, although he, too, had received a knock from the same fragment.

"In one interval of watching, a young courier was observed running in at top speed across an exposed place to gain cover under the Chickamauga's battery. Before the lad reached it, however, an exploding fifteeninch shell intervened, and almost eliminated him, so much so, that the sailors could find scarcely a recognizable semblance of humanity left to bury in the little hole they hastily scraped out of the sand for that purpose. Some of the missiles striking the sand mounds 'full and by,' sent fountains of dust aloft, while here and there others burrowed in the sand plain, and exploding, left a hole big enough to plant a tree in. Just back of the navy guns, scarcely two hundred yards away, were some framework stables in which a few officers' horses had been left in the emergency of the attack. These buildings, being in the hottest line of concentrated

fire, and wholly unsheltered, were speedily breached, and set in flames by the shells, leaving the terrified animals free to escape and gallop madly up and down the plain inside the fort, until one after another they were shotdown. One horse, a handsome grey, came back exhausted after his frantic gallop, with the blood from a wound showing plainly on his neck, and stood patiently as near his stable gate as the flames would permit, until another shell fortunately soon finished his affair.

"Up in the bomb-proof, in the angle formed by the meeting of the land and sea faces of the fort, the surgeons were busily at work over the stream of wounded which trickled in to them during the day, and just outside of their doorway, beyond a little sand-curtain, one found an indi cation of their whereabouts, in the dozen or so of legs and arms which had been hastily tossed there after amputation. The Chickamauga detachment furnished its quota to the hospital, but the worst experience for the sailors was destined to come the following day.

"Then, on Christmas morning, after an harassing night of false alarms spent by the garrison, the fleet came in again, this time earlier, and prepared for a fuller day of it. The same hammering from the ships, and the same sullen and slow response from the fort, characterized the proceedings of the second day's work during the morning hours, but the enemy's fire increased in intensity in the afternoon, as the preliminary of an attack from the land forces of military, which were then disembarking from various transports beyond range up the beach.

"Before this latter demonstration took place, however, the Chickamauga's people were treated to a new and highly disagreeable experience.

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While they were engaged in firing gun No. 1, and just as a shell burst over the battery, severely wounding Lieut. Dornin of the navy, who was standing near, the piece itself exploded with terrific force. This heavy gun, weighing about 15,000 pounds, was split by the explosion from the jaws of the cas-cabet horizontally through to the trunnions, and then sliced perpendicularly through the chase. One-half of its breech was blown back over the heads of a group of officers near by, and the other portion smashed through the carriage to the ground, while the heavy bands from around the breech spread apart and miscellaneously damaged the gun's crew. When the officers at the rear struggled to their feet and whether they were knocked down by concussion or astonishment they never knew... a strange sight presented itself.

"One man lay dead, with his arms stretched out towards them and his skull blown off, while another appeared twisted in a knot over a piece of iron band lapped across his stomach. Others were more or less hurt, and one man was leaping about the battery like a lunatic, crying out that he was on fire. He could scarcely be comforted, even when on stripping off his shirt he was found only to be tattooed by grains of powder and sand blown into his back and shoulders.

This finished the work of gun No. 1. Its remaining crew turned to at the other gun, and its midshipmen found duty at headquarters in assisting the staff of Gen. Whiting about the preparations then in course to meet the threatened land attack.

"As it happened curiously enough, Passed Midshipman Berrien's gun, the remaining one of the Chickamauga's battery, soon after followed the bad example of its mate, and exploded much in the same manner, with a further but not so disastrous damage to the crew.

"By this time, towards three o'clock in the afternoon, there was a slackening of the shelling on the land face, and a redoubled firing on that fronting the sea, indicating that the land forces were advancing to attack the former portion of the fort. Orders were immediately issued by the general to man the breast works and parapet on that side, and to this end it became necessary to get from out of the bomb-proofs a battalion of conscripts which had been drafted from home-guard service to eke out the garrison. As these 'Junior Reserves' were the remains of former