She spread the story out on her knee:  Exchange of prisoners having virtually ceased, a number of captive Confederate officers had been started up the Mississippi from New Orleans, under a heavy but unwary guard, on a “tin-clad” steamer, to wear out the rest of the war in a Northern prison.  Forbidden to gather even in pairs, they had yet moved freely about, often passing each other closely enough to exchange piecemeal counsels unnoticed, and all at once, at a tap of the boat’s bell had sprung, man for man, upon their keepers and instantly were masters of them, of them, of their arms stacked on the boiler-deck and of the steamboat, which they had promptly run ashore on the East Louisiana side and burned.  So ran the tale, and so broke off.  Ought Anna to be told it, or not?

“No,” said the sister.  “After all, why should we put her again through all those sufferings that so nearly killed her after Shiloh?”

“If he would only—­”

“Telegraph?  How do we know he hasn’t?”

Next morning the two unencumbered Callenders went down the bay.  But they found no need to leave the boat.  A series of mishaps delayed her, the tide hindered, rain fell, and at length she was told to wait for orders and so lay all night at anchor just off Fort Gaines, but out of the prospective line of fire from the foe newly entrenched behind it.  The rain ceased and, as one of Hilary’s songs ran—­

  “The stars shed forth their light serene.”

The ladies had the captain’s room, under the pilot-house.  Once Anna woke, and from the small windows that opened to every quarter except up the bay townward looked forth across the still waters and low shores.  Right at hand loomed Fort Gaines.  A league away north-west rose small Fort Powell, just enough from the water to show dimly its unfinished parapets.  In her heart’s vision she saw within it her own Kincaid’s Battery, his and hers.  South-eastward, an opposite league away, she could make out Fort Morgan, but not the Tennessee.  The cool, briny air hung still, the wide waters barely lifted and fell.  She returned and slept again until some one ran along the narrow deck under her reclosed windows, and a male voice said—­

“The Yankee fleet!  It’s coming in!”

Miranda was dressing.  Out on the small deck voices were quietly audible and the clink of a ratchet told that the boat was weighing anchor.  She rang three-bells.  The captain’s small clock showed half-past five.  Now the swiftly dressed pair opened their windows.  The rising sun made a golden path across the tranquil bay and lighted up the three forts and the starry battlecross softly stirring over each.  Dauphin Island and Mobile Point were moss-green and pearly white.  The long, low, velvety pulsations of the bay were blue, lilac, pink, green, bronze.  But angry smoke poured from the funnels of the Tennessee and her three dwarf consorts, they four also showing the battle-flag, and some seven miles away, out in the Gulf, just beyond the gleaming eastern point of Sand Island, was one other sign of unrest.