Page:Memoirs of Henry Villard, volume 2.djvu/31

 of the black audience to these remarks. The most venomous pro-slavery agitator in the North could not have denied that the General was fully understood. But the wildest shouts of joy broke out when General Saxton announced, after General Hunter had concluded, that fifty thousand muskets were arriving from the North to arm the freedmen of South Carolina. Cheers for liberty and the Union were never given more heartily by white volunteers than those elicited by the announcement.

The monitor Montauk departed a few days after my arrival for the Ogeechee River for a trial of her offensive and defensive strength against the rebel Fort McAllister, which protected the approaches to the city of Savannah. Colonel Burton, of the Forty-eighth Regiment of New York Volunteers, who was in command of the captured Fort Pulaski at the mouth of the Savannah, had come to Hilton Head on official business, and invited me to accompany him on his return trip in order to witness the exploits of the monitor. We left on January 28, reaching Pulaski in the evening. The fort had been entirely restored and made stronger than before. It mounted eighty guns and had a garrison of two regiments. The next morning we started early for the Ogeechee by the inland passage. We passed by the Tybee River and Warsaw Sound into the network of channels connecting the latter with Ossabaw Sound. Our pilot lost his way, and we found ourselves caught in the Romney Marsh in a passage so narrow and shallow that our boat grounded and touched the banks on both sides. It was extricated with great difficulty from its perilous position. As it was unarmed, we should have been an easy prey to the enemy, who happily did not discover our plight. It was a narrow escape for me from a taste of Southern prisons. We steamed back to Fort Pulaski, reaching there only late in the evening. Our mishap was the more provoking as we had been so near the scene of action that we not only heard the firing, but saw the puffs of powder-smoke ascend after each discharge. We learned the next morning from the attacking fleet that there had been a severe artillery fight,