but rather hoping for some stroke of good fortune to enable him to defend the line of the Arkansas and to keep Price out of Missouri. CHAPTER XXVIII. THE DAM. Directly after the capture of Port Hudson, Bailey offered to float the two Confederate transport steamers, _Starlight_ and _Red Chief_, that were found lying on their sides high and almost dry in the middle of Thompson's Creek. With smiles and a shrug or two permission was given him to try; he tried; he succeeded; and this experience it undoubtedly was that caused his words to be listened to so readily when he now proposed to rescue the fleet in the same way. But to build at leisure and unmolested a pair of little wing-dams in the ooze of Thompson's creek and to close the opening by a central boom against that sluggish current was one thing; it was quite another to repeat the same operation against time, while surrounded and even cut off by a strong and active enemy, this too on the scale required to hold back the rushing waters of the Red River, at a depth sufficient for the passage of the heaviest of the gunboats and for a time long enough to let the whole fleet go by. Yet, bold as the bare conception seems, and stupendous as the work looks when regarded in detail, no sooner had it been suggested by Bailey then every engineer in the army at once entered heartily into the scheme. Palfrey, who had previously made a complete survey of the rapids, examined the plan carefully, and approved it. Franklin, to whose staff Bailey was attached, himself an engineer of distinguished attainments and wide experience, approved it, and Banks at once gave orders to carry it out. In the month that had elapsed since the fleet ascended the rapids, the river had fallen more than six feet; for more than a mile the rocks now lay bare. In the worst places but forty inches of water were found, while with seven feet the heavy gunboats could barely float, and in some places the channel, shallow as it was, narrowed to a thread. The current ran nine miles an hour. The whole fall was thirteen feet, and at the point just above the lower chute, where Bailey proposed to construct his dam, the river was 758 feet wide, with a fall of six feet below the dam. The problem was how to raise the water above the dam seven feet, backing it up so as to float the gunboats over the upper rapids.