fell back.  At first I ordered the guard to return, but finding that it would take some time to get the men together and march them back to their position, I countermanded the order.  Then fearing that the enemy we had seen crossing the river below might be coming upon us unawares, I rode out in the field to our front, still entirely alone, to observe whether the enemy was passing.  The field was grown up with corn so tall and thick as to cut off the view of even a person on horseback, except directly along the rows.  Even in that direction, owing to the overhanging blades of corn, the view was not extensive.  I had not gone more than a few hundred yards when I saw a body of troops marching past me not fifty yards away.  I looked at them for a moment and then turned my horse towards the river and started back, first in a walk, and when I thought myself concealed from the view of the enemy, as fast as my horse could carry me.  When at the river bank I still had to ride a few hundred yards to the point where the nearest transport lay.

The cornfield in front of our transports terminated at the edge of a dense forest.  Before I got back the enemy had entered this forest and had opened a brisk fire upon the boats.  Our men, with the exception of details that had gone to the front after the wounded, were now either aboard the transports or very near them.  Those who were not aboard soon got there, and the boats pushed off.  I was the only man of the National army between the rebels and our transports.  The captain of a boat that had just pushed out but had not started, recognized me and ordered the engineer not to start the engine; he then had a plank run out for me.  My horse seemed to take in the situation.  There was no path down the bank and every one acquainted with the Mississippi River knows that its banks, in a natural state, do not vary at any great angle from the perpendicular.  My horse put his fore feet over the bank without hesitation or urging, and with his hind feet well under him, slid down the bank and trotted aboard the boat, twelve or fifteen feet away, over a single gang plank.  I dismounted and went at once to the upper deck.

The Mississippi River was low on the 7th of November, 1861, so that the banks were higher than the heads of men standing on the upper decks of the steamers.  The rebels were some distance back from the river, so that their fire was high and did us but little harm.  Our smoke-stack was riddled with bullets, but there were only three men wounded on the boats, two of whom were soldiers.  When I first went on deck I entered the captain’s room adjoining the pilot-house, and threw myself on a sofa.  I did not keep that position a moment, but rose to go out on the deck to observe what was going on.  I had scarcely left when a musket ball entered the room, struck the head of the sofa, passed through it and lodged in the foot.