Dick and Pennington, wrapped in their blankets and overcoats, slept upon the deck that night, with scores of others strewed about them.  They were awakened after eleven o’clock by a sputter of rifle shots.  Dick sat up in a daze and heard a bullet hum by his ear.  Then he heard a powerful voice shouting:  “Down!  Down, all of you!  It’s only some skirmishers in the woods!” Then a cannon on one of the armor clads thundered, and a shell ripped its way through the underbrush on the west bank.  Many exclamations were uttered by the half-awakened lads.

“What is it?  Has an army attacked us?”

“Are we before the fort and under fire?”

“Take your foot off me, you big buffalo!”

It was Colonel Winchester who had commanded them to keep down, but Dick, a staff officer, knew that it did not apply to him.  Instead he sprang erect and assisted the senior officers in compelling the others to lie flat upon the decks.  He saw several flashes of fire in the undergrowth, but he had logic enough to know that it could only be a small Southern band.  Three or four more shells raked the woods, and then there was no reply.

The boats steamed steadily on.  Only one or two of the young soldiers had been hurt and they but lightly.  All rolled themselves again in their blankets and coats and went back to sleep.

The second awakening was about half way between midnight and dawn.  Something cold was continually dropping on Dick’s face and he awoke to find hundreds of sheeted and silent white forms lying motionless upon the deck.  Snow was falling swiftly out of a dark sky, and the fleet was moving slowly.  In the darkness and stillness the engines throbbed powerfully, and the night was lighted fitfully by the showers of sparks that gushed now and then from the smoke stacks.

Dick thought of rising and brushing the snow from his blankets, but he was so warm inside them that he yawned once or twice and went to sleep again.  When he awoke it was morning again, the snow had ceased and the men were brushing it from themselves and the decks.

The young soldiers, as they ate breakfast, spoke of the rifle shots that had been fired at them the night before and, since little damage had been done, they appreciated the small spice of danger.  The wildness and mystery of their situation appealed to them, too.  They were like explorers, penetrating new regions.

“To most of us it’s something like the great plains,” said Pennington to Dick.  “There you seldom know what you’re coming to; maybe a blizzard, maybe a buffalo herd, and maybe a band of Indians, and you take a pleasure in the uncertainty.  But I suppose it’s not the same to you, this being your state.”

“I don’t know much about Western Kentucky,” said Dick, “my part lies to the center and east, but anyway, our work is to be done in Tennessee.  Those two forts, which I’m sure we’re after, lie in that state.”