Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 16.djvu/178

 172 Southern Historical Society Papers.

and a tremendous artillery fight took place between these vessels and Fort Moultrie and the batteries on Sullivan's Island. A night attack was made on Fort Sumter, but the garrison was prepared and the attack was a most signal failure. As none of the Twenty -fifth South Carolina volunteers were engaged, it is not my purpose to describe this attack or to say more than that quite a number of the enemy were killed and captured with small loss to the Confederates.

September oth to ^oth. We were allowed several days of perfect rest, which the men greatly needed. The enemy were very quiet during the remainder of the month of September. We heard that a deserter from one of the Georgia regiments went to the enemy about the time the evacuation of Morris Island was completed, and informed them that we were gone. The movement had been made with so much skill that the statement was not credited. He was told thai; he would be held as a hostage while a sergeant and a file of men were sent around to the sally-port of Wagner to ascertain the true condition of the fort. If the story proved false the deserter was to be shot. The sergeant found that we had gone, and entered the fort in time to extinguish the slow match which Captain Huguenin had lighted to blow up the magazine. The regiment resumed the routine of camp life, and one day was spent very much like the others. Drills and dress-parades, guard-mountings and picketing with monot- onous regularity filled up the time.

One of the topics of interest in camp was the two great guns brought from England by a blockade-runner and mounted in White Point Garden (the battery) in Charleston. They were enormous pieces of artillery, about five feet in diameter between the trunnions and the base of the breech, and carrying an oblong shot of seven hundred pounds weight. One was badly damaged in firing some experimental shots and had to be strapped with iron hoops. It was found that the cracking of the metal was due to some mistake in loading, and when directions were received from the maker, it was said that they could be used without further danger of bursting. They were two useless pieces of ordnance. I never heard of their doing the enemy any damage.

October ist to November ^oth. The regiment moved from " Camp Gadberry" to the field immediately in front of the Presbyterian church and on the opposite side of the road. The new lines, which ran from a point on the marsh south of the neck of the Secessionville peninsula to the Stono river above Dill's, were completed, and the woods between the church and Grimball's, in which there had been