By nine o'clock all was hushed near the Landing. The host of combatants that three hours before had been deep in the work of human destruction had all sunk silently to the earth, "the wearied to sleep, the wounded to die." The stars looked out upon the scene, and all breathed the natural quiet and calm of a Sabbath evening. But presently there came a flash that spread like sheet lightning over the ripples of the river-current, and the roar of a heavy naval gun went echoing up and down the bluffs, through the unnatural stillness of the night. Others speedily followed. By the flash you could just discern the black outline of the piratical-looking hull, and see how the gunboat gracefully settled into the water at the recoil: the smoke soon cast up a thin veil that seemed only to soften and sweeten the scene, from the woods away inland you caught faintly the muffled explosion of the shell, like the knell of the spirit that was taking its flight. We knew nothing then of the effect of this gunboat cannonading, which was vigorously kept up till nearly morning, and it only served to remind us the more vividly of the day's disasters, of the fact that half a mile off lay a victorious enemy, commanded by the most dashing of their generals, and of the question one scarcely dared ask himself: "What to-morrow?" We were defeated, our dead and dying were around us, days could hardly sum up our losses. And then there came up that grand refrain of Whittier's--written after Manassas, I believe, but on that night, apparently far more applicable to this greater than Manassas--"Under the Cloud and Through the Sea." "Sons of the Saints who faced their Jordan flood, In fierce Atlantic's unretreating wave-- Who by the Red Sea of their glorious blood Reached to the Freedom that your blood shall save! O, countrymen! God's day is not yet done! He leaveth not his people utterly! Count it a covenant, that he leads us on Beneath the clouds and through the crimson sea? [Illustration: MAJOR-GENERAL BUTTERFIELD.] CHAPTER XIV. "AGATE'S" STORY CONCLUDED. THE WORK OF SUNDAY NIGHT--LANDING OF BUELL'S TROOPS--EFFECT OF THE BOMBARDMENT--LACK OF SYSTEM IN THE UNION ARMY--RENEWING THE BATTLE--A CHANGE OF TACTICS--TURNING THE TIDE--CRITTENDEN'S ADVANCE--THE ADVANCE AT THE CENTRE--A GRAND PARADE ON THE FIELD OF WAR--REDEEMING THE LOSSES OF SUNDAY--FACING THE LOUISIANA TROOPS--SILENCING THE BATTERY--END OF THE GREAT STRUGGLE. After giving the roll of the Federal troops engaged at Shiloh, "Agate" concludes his remarkable narrative as follows: