Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/144

   The second day of our confinement in the stockade will never be forgotten by the survivors of that six hundred. At early noon the Federal batteries on Morris Island, and all the guns of the Yankee fleet, opened on the Confederate forts and Charleston City. Our batteries all replied and for two or three hours the duel lasted. The shells from Sumter and our other batteries fell thick and fast upon the island, most of them uncomfortably close to our stockade. We began to think, for a time, our fellows in Sumter had forgotten we were prisoners on Morris Island; but before the duel was over we found our gunners were not directing their shells towards our pen. It was amusing to watch the negro guards on the parapet dodge and drop when a shell from Sumter went across our stockade, or burst over the pen; it was all Hallowell and his officers could do to keep the negro sentinels at their posts, the poor niggers were so frightened. Just as soon as they heard the report of a gun from