Page:History of the Forty-eighth Regiment, M.V.M. during the Civil War (IA historyoffortyei00plumm).pdf/68

 on we plodded through clouds of dust. No wonder that some of the boys sank by the side of the road exhausted, only to come up late in the evening after the regiment had bivouacked. But the longest day and the weariest march must have an end and as the shades of night were falling we halted at a corn field where, after a hasty meal, we bivouacked for the night. With knapsacks for pillows and the starry heavens for canopy we lay along the ridges of the corn field and tired Nature's sweet restorer, balmy sleep, soon came to our relief.

The writer remembers being hastily awakened after a few hours sleep by the comrade by his side who said, "Look up over the trees!" and there we could easily trace the course of the shells from Farragut's mortar boats and could hear their dull, explosive thud as they fell inside the works at Port Hudson. But even that display of fireworks interested us but for a moment. Soon we were again sleeping soundly unconscious of the tumult on the river. Shortly after midnight the cry, "fall in" passed along the lines and slinging knapsacks and shouldering rifles we passed out of the field past the long, long lines of sleeping men and were again on the march, this time away from Port Hudson. What this movement meant we could not comprehend. Had disaster befallen the fleet or our troops at the front? Were we beginning the retreat? All was doubt and uncertainty. We stumbled along in the thick darkness through the dense woods, the silence of which was broken only by an occasional heavy booming sound from the river. The black darkness of the night grew heavier and heavier. It was at that darkest hour just before the dawn when all at once the entire heavens were aglow. An instant flash of lights as bright as the