and the expected assault.  When the sun was about an hour high, another signal-message came from General Hazen that he was all ready, and I replied to go ahead, as a friendly steamer was approaching from below.  Soon we made out a group of officers on the deck of this vessel, signaling with a flag, “Who are you!” The answer went back promptly, “General Sherman.”  Then followed the question, “Is Fort McAllister taken?” “Not yet, but it will be in a minute!” Almost at that instant of time, we saw Hazen’s troops come out of the dark fringe of woods that encompassed the fort, the lines dressed as on parade, with colors flying, and moving forward with a quick, steady pace.  Fort McAllister was then all alive, its big guns belching forth dense clouds of smoke, which soon enveloped our assaulting lines.  One color went down, but was up in a moment.  On the lines advanced, faintly seen in the white, sulphurous smoke; there was a pause, a cessation of fire; the smoke cleared away, and the parapets were blue with our men, who fired their muskets in the air, and shouted so that we actually heard them, or felt that we did.  Fort McAllister was taken, and the good news was instantly sent by the signal-officer to our navy friends on the approaching gunboat, for a point of timber had shut out Fort McAllister from their view, and they had not seen the action at all, but must have heard the cannonading.

During the progress of the assault, our little group on Cheeves’s mill hardly breathed; but no sooner did we see our flags on the parapet than I exclaimed, in the language of the poor negro at Cobb’s plantation, “This nigger will have no sleep this night!”

I was resolved to communicate with our fleet that night, which happened to be a beautiful moonlight one.  At the wharf belonging to Cheeves’s mill was a small skiff, that had been used by our men in fishing or in gathering oysters.  I was there in a minute, called for a volunteer crew, when several young officers, Nichols and Merritt among the number; said they were good oarsmen, and volunteered to pull the boat down to Fort McAllister.  General Howard asked to accompany me; so we took seats in the stern of the boat, and our crew of officers pulled out with a will.  The tide was setting in strong, and they had a hard pull, for, though the distance was but three miles in an air-line, the river was so crooked that the actual distance was fully six miles.  On the way down we passed the wreck of a steamer which had been sunk some years before, during a naval attack on Fort McAllister.

Night had fairly set in when we discovered a soldier on the beach.  I hailed him, and inquired if he knew where General Hazen was.  He answered that the general was at the house of the overseer of the plantation (McAllister’s), and that he could guide me to it.  We accordingly landed, tied our boat to a driftlog, and followed our guide through bushes to a frame-house, standing in a grove of live-oaks, near a row of negro quarters.