I called the roll of the company, as was my duty, and found seventy-nine men out of one hundred and three present,—­there was a good deal of sickness then in the army.  Soon four of the company came in from the hospital, declaring they would have a share in the fight; and fourteen who were on guard were added, making the company nearly full.

Two steamboats soon had steam up, and by nine A.M., General Pillow, with his brigade of three thousand five hundred men, was across the river and in the fight.

Up to this time, the Federal force had driven the Confederates back from their camps, and threatened their annihilation, but Pillow’s arrival stayed the retreat.  By ten A.M., Cheatham’s brigade of 2500 men, in which was my regiment, were also coming into the engagement.  By eleven A.M., both armies were fully employed.  In the mean time some of the guns on the fortifications at Columbus were trying their range upon the Federal gunboats, which lay about three miles distant, and replied fiercely to their challenges.  But little execution on either side was done by this firing.  The carelessness of the officers in our brigade nearly lost the day, early in the contest.  The men had but ten rounds of ammunition, which was soon expended, and we were compelled to retire beneath the bank of the river until more was supplied.

This incident developed a strange, and to me a very sad, trait of human nature,—­other illustrations of which I have observed repeatedly since,—­an unusual disposition to witticisms in the most solemn circumstances, when it might be supposed that even the most hardened would reflect upon the fearful fate sure to seize upon some of them.  One of the captains of our regiment, J.L.  Saffarrens, ran into the river waist-deep, in his desire for safety, when one of his men called out, “Captain, dear, are ye off for Memphis?  If ye are, tell the ould woman the last ye saw ov me I was fighting, while ye were runnin’ away.”

The gallant captain received a ball in the face, while stuck in the mud into which he had sunk, and was taken to Memphis with the wounded next day; but I never learned that he delivered the message to the “ould woman.”  A curious little Irishman in our company, nick-named “Dublin Tricks,” who was extremely awkward, and scarcely knew one end of his gun from the other, furnished the occasion of another outburst of laughter, just when the bullets were flying like hail around us.  In his haste or ignorance, he did what is often done in the excitement of rapid firing by older soldiers:  he rammed down his first cartridge without biting off the end, hence the gun did not go off.  He went through the motions, putting in another load and snapping his lock, with the same result, and so on for several minutes.  Finally, he thought of a remedy, and sitting down, he patiently picked some priming into the tube.  This time the gun and Dublin both went off.  He picked himself up slowly, and called out in a serio-comic tone of voice, committing the old Irish bull, “Hould, asy with your laffin’, boys; there is sivin more loads in her yit.”