When in hot haste the steamer had been loaded, the word was given to push off from the landing; but she could not be moved. The boxes of muskets had been piled up around the engine-room to guard it against any shot that might be sent from the battery planted by our plausible Governor for the defence of the State on the levee above, and their weight had pressed the prow of the steamer down into the clay of the river-bank, and she stuck fast. Such a moment would have paralyzed many men; but the undaunted Stokes was cool and equal to the occasion. He cried to his energetic helpers, “Move the boxes aft.” With right good will the order was obeyed. Two hundred boxes of muskets were quickly carried astern, when the steamer’s prow was lifted free from the clay and she floated out upon deep water. “Which way?” said the captain of the “City of Alton.” Stokes replied, “Out to the channel of the river, then north to Alton.” “But,” said Captain Mitchell of the steamer, “what if the battery on the levee fires upon us?” “We will defend ourselves,” said Stokes. “What if they beat us?” asked Mitchell. “Push her to the middle of the river and sink her,” replied Stokes. “I’ll do it,” said Mitchell. On he steamed. He came abreast the battery; he passed it. Cannoneers and cannon seemed to be asleep. There was no sound from human or brazen throat. Plash, plash went the steamer’s wheels; on, on she ploughed through the murky waters, and at five in the morning reached her destination. As soon as she touched the landing at Alton, Captain Stokes ran to the market-house and rang the fire-bell. The inhabitants roused from their morning slumbers, came pouring out of their houses, some of them half-dressed, to fight fire as soon as they found it. The Captain told them, “There is no fire; but at the landing is that steamer which you all know; it is now loaded with arms and ammunition from the Arsenal at St. Louis; to get them we outwitted and of course disappointed the secessionists; they may pursue us; so we wish as speedily as possible to get these guns to the capital of your State. Will you help us carry them from the ‘City of Alton’ to these empty freight-cars?” With a shout that rolled across the Father of Waters to the opposite shore, men, women, and children laid hold of this hard task. They tugged at the heavy boxes of muskets, carrying, dragging, wheeling them. Their enthusiasm rose every moment to a higher pitch; and just as the clock struck seven the work was done. The cargo of the steamer was on the cars. The doors were shut and padlocked. The locomotive whistled, the bell rang, the steam puffed, the wheels moved, on went the ponderous train with its coveted load amid the shouts and huzzas of the patriotic Altonians.[16] Nor did they forget that morning their own martyred Lovejoy, who, fighting against slavery and for the freedom of the press, poured out his blood on the same spot where they then stood; and that his blood so ruthlessly