A most painful scene transpired at the sinking of the launch, in which were some sixty wounded men, and twenty or thirty members of the California First. The launch had been safely taken half way across the river, when, to their utter consternation, it was discovered that it was leaking, and the water gradually, but surely, gaining upon them. The wounded were lying at the bottom, suffering intolerably from their various dislocations, wounds and injuries, and all soaking in water, which at the very start was fully four inches deep. As the water grew deeper and rose above the prostrate forms of the wounded, their comrades lifted them into sitting postures that they might not be strangled by the fast rising stream. But the groans and cries, screams and moanings of the poor fellows who were thus tortured, were most distressing and indescribable. Despite all that could be done, the fate of the launch, and all that were in it, with the exception of a few expert swimmers, was sealed; suddenly, and like a flash of lightning, the fragile craft sunk, carrying with it at least fifty dying sufferers, and some twenty or thirty others, who had trusted their lives to its treacherous hold. The very skies were pitiless that evening. O the misery of the black, tempestuous night, when the rain poured down upon that narrow island where those who escaped the flood and field were bivouacked, huddled together and bereft of their comrades-in-arms! Scores of the dead were guarded by sullen watchers; the wounded were tended in every possible shelter. The river swelled in a kind of savage triumph over the havoc it had made, its current darkling and murmuring on the east and west, while on the opposite shore lay their dead comrades, whose white faces the rain beat in merciless fury, but all unfelt, and far more harmless than it fell upon the living victims. Next morning boat loads of dead and wounded were brought from the battle-field under a flag of truce; and a dispatch had been published in Washington stating that General Stone had successfully thrown his force across the Potomac, and held his position secure against any hostile force.