Instead of finding high water at the season when it was naturally expected, the river fell, and ten gunboats and two tugs were left helpless above the falls. Nevertheless, help came when Lieut.-col. Joseph Bailey, of the Fourth Wisconsin Volunteers, saw the situation. Bailey was a log-driver, and knew how to lift a jam over any kind of rifts or obstructions. Nearly everybody who heard of his plan, doubted and many jeered at the idea; “but Bailey had the faith that moves mountains.” Moreover, there were right at hand two regiments of men from Maine--nearly 2,000 men, of whom Jeremiah O’Brien, who captured the _Margaretta_, would have been proud. The rifts were a mile long, and at a point below them the high banks were 758 feet apart. The water between the high banks was deep enough to float any gunboat, but not too deep for building a dam. Bailey said he would build a dam there that would flood the rifts to navigating depth, and he did it. The men from Maine swung their axes in the forest near by, and the teamsters hauled the cut trees, branches and all, and dumped them into the water. Here other Maine men piled the trees up with their butts down-stream, cross-tied with logs and their branches interlacing above. Similar dams can be seen in any of the logging regions of the United States in these days. This dam extended from the north bank, a little more than half-way across the stream. From the south bank, for lack of trees, a crib dam--cribs of logs filled with stone--was built. When the opening between the ends of these dams was small enough--when it was but 150 feet wide--it was filled with four coal barges that were loaded with brick and sunk there. [Illustration: Red River Dam. _From “The Navy in the Civil War.”_] Astonishing as it seems to one who has seen such dams built, Bailey and his men from Maine had completed the dam in eight days, deepening the water on the rifts by more than six feet--the water was deep enough on the rifts for the _Osage_, the _Neosho_, and _Hindman_ to pass down and anchor in the still water between the foot of the rifts and the dam. But just as this success had been attained two of the sunken coal barges in the centre of the dam were shoved out of line by the weight of water, and in an instant the backwater above the dam began to pour through the opening in a mighty torrent. At that moment the gunboat _Lexington_, with steam up, was at the head of the rifts, ready to follow the gunboats that had passed down to safety, while Admiral Porter stood on the bank, overseeing the operation. One glance at the broken dam showed that the level of the water must quickly fall, and Porter shouted to the _Lexington_ to go ahead over the rifts and through the break in the dam to the still water below. Instantly her pilot rang the bell to start the engines.