There was a clearing and a miserable log-hut near by. The family had fled, frightened by the cannonade. We found them cowering in the woods,--a man, his wife and daughter. The land all around them was exceedingly rich, but they were very poor. All they had to eat was hog and hominy. They had been told that the Union troops would rob them of all they had, which was not likely, because they had nothing worth stealing! They were trembling with fear, but when they found the soldiers and sailors well-behaved and peaceable, they forgot their terror. The fog lifts at last, and we can see the white tents of the Rebels on the Tennessee shore. There are the batteries, with the cannon grim and black pointing up stream. Round the point of land is the island. A half-dozen steamboats lie in the stream below it. At times they steam up to the bend and then go back again,--wandering back and forth like rats in a cage. They cannot get past General Pope's guns at New Madrid. On the north side of the island is a great floating-battery of eight guns, which has been towed up from New Orleans. General Mackall has sunk a steamboat in a narrow part of the channel on the north side of the island, so that if Commodore Foote attempts to run the blockade he will be compelled to pass along the south channel, exposed to the fire of all the guns in the four batteries upon the Tennessee shore, as well as those upon the island. Two of the mortar-boats were brought into position two miles from the Rebel batteries. We waited in a fever of expectation while Captain Maynadier was making ready, for thirteen-inch mortars had never been used in war. The largest used by the French and English in the bombardment of Sebastopol were much smaller. There came a roar like thunder. It was not a sharp, piercing report, but a deep, heavy boom, which rolled along the mighty river, echoing and re-echoing from shore to shore,--a prolonged reverberation, heard fifty miles away. A keg of powder was burned in the single explosion. The shell rose in a beautiful curve, exploded five hundred feet high, and fell in fragments around the distant encampment. There was a flash beneath the dark forest-trees near the encampment, a puff of white smoke, an answering roar, and a shot fell into the water a half-mile down stream from the mortars. The Rebels had accepted the challenge. Sunday came. The boats having the mortars in tow dropped them along the Missouri shore. The gunboats swung into the stream. The Benton fired her rifled guns over the point of land at the Rebel steamboats below the island. There was a sudden commotion. They quickly disappeared down the river towards New Madrid, out of range. During the morning there was a deep booming from the direction of Point Pleasant. The Rebel gunboats were trying to drive Colonel Plummer from his position.