In midsummer, hostilities began in earnest. On July 11 an assault on Fort Wagner was begun from Morris Island, and was followed by a bombardment, Admiral Dahlgren firing shells from his gunboats, and General Gillmore opening with his land batteries. Then followed the charge of the black troops under Colonel R. G. Shaw, and the long siege in which the “swamp angel,” a two-hundred-pounder Parrott, opened fire on Charleston. It was then that Clara Barton found what providential leading had brought her to this place. Not from a sheltered retreat, but under actual fire of the guns she ministered to the wounded and the dying. All day long under a hot sun she boiled water to wash their wounds, and by night she ministered to them, too ardent to remember her need of sleep. The hot winds drove the sand into her eyes, and weariness and danger were ever present. But she did her work unterrified. She saw Colonel Elwell leading the charge, and he believed that not only himself, but General Voris and Leggett would have died but for her ministrations. Follow me, if you will, through these eight months [Miss Barton said shortly afterward]. I remember eight months of weary siege--scorched by the sun, chilled by the waves, rocked by the tempest, buried in the shifting sands, toiling day after day in the trenches, with the angry fire of five forts hissing through their ranks during every day of those weary months. This was when your brave old regiments stood thundering at the gate of proud rebellious Charleston.... There, frowning defiance, with Moultrie on her left, Johnson on her right, and Wagner in front, she stood hurling fierce death and destruction full in the faces of the brave band who beleaguered her walls. Sumter, the watch-dog, that stood before her door, lay maimed and bleeding at her feet, pierced with shot and torn with shell, the tidal waves lapping his wounds. Still there was danger in his growl and death in his bite.”[10] One summer afternoon our brave little army was drawn up among the island sands and formed in line of march. For hours we watched. Dim twilight came, then the darkness for which they had waited, while the gloom and stillness of death settled down on the gathered forces of Morris Island. Then we pressed forward and watched again. A long line of phosphorescent light streamed and shot along the waves ever surging on our right.