At nightfall, Captain Hallen’s company relieved Travers at the advanced picquet; and the men of the rest of the Battalion, being much fatigued by their uncomfortable night in the boats, their tedious landing, and their march, lay down in bivouack. They had torn down some of the palings dividing the fields, and had made good fires which then burned brightly. While they were thus, as they fancied, secure, a schooner dropped down the Mississippi, and guided by the light of their fires, opened a heavy cannonade upon them with great effect. The men of course were aroused and dispersed; but no shelter could be found, in this dead flat, except by crouching under the embankment by the riverside. Hallen had seen the schooner pass his post and had sent a man off to alarm the Battalion; but the schooner having the current of the river in her favour reached the bivouack before the Rifleman could get there. While in this state of alarm from the sudden cannonade from the schooner, heavy and continued firing was heard in the front. A body of 5,000 Americans had attacked Hallen’s picquet, detaching 1,500 men through the wood to turn the right of the troops. Nobly Hallen kept them at bay; but being himself wounded, and his picquet threatened by such overpowering odds, reinforcements advanced from the Battalion. Meanwhile the enemy made way through the garden of a house on the right, where a picquet of the 85th had been placed; and the night being very dark, a hand to hand fight took place. Every deception was practised by the enemy; and having discovered (from prisoners probably made in the _mêlée_) the regiments opposed to them, they would call out, ‘Come on my brave ninety-fifth (or eighty-fifth),’ and then make those who advanced prisoners. But this _ruse_ was not always successful; more than once they found that instead of making Riflemen prisoners, they had themselves ‘caught a Tartar.’ On one such occasion an officer and some men of the Battalion made a body of the Yankees prisoners, and when they were desired to lay down their arms, the cowardly officer who commanded them made a stab at the 95th officer with a knife. He was summarily disposed of; for a Rifleman instantly shot him through the body.