Toward the end of January Grant landed on the long neck opposite Vicksburg, and once more set to work on the canal. Porter now determined to let a detachment of his fleet run the gauntlet of the batteries of Vicksburg for the purpose of destroying every thing the Confederates had afloat below the town. The ran _Queen of the West_, Colonel Charles R. Ellet, protected by two tiers of cotton bales, was told off to lead the adventure. On the 2d of February she performed the feat; then passing on down the river, on the 3d, ran fifteen miles below the mouth of the Red River, and the same distance up that stream, took and burned three Confederate supply steamboats, and got safely back to Vicksburg on the 5th. Porter was naturally jubilant, for, as it seemed, the mastery of the great river had been the swift reward of his enterprise.
A week later Ellet again ran down the Mississippi and up the Red, burning and destroying until, pushing his success too far, he found himself under the guns of Fort De Russy. A few shots sufficed to disable the _Queen of the West_, which fell into the hands of the Confederates, while Ellet and his men escaped in one of their captures.
Below Natchez they met the _Indianola_ coming down the river, after safely passing Vicksburg. On the 24th the Confederate gunboat _Webb_, and the ram _Queen of the West_, now also flying the Confederate colors, came after the _Indianola_, attacked her off Palmyra Island, and sank her. Thus, as suddenly as it had gone from them, the control of the long reach of the Mississippi once more passed over to the Confederates.
At this news Farragut took fire. Between him and the impudent little Confederate flotilla, whose easy triumph had suddenly laid low the hopes and plans of his brother admiral, there stood nothing save the guns of Port Hudson. These batteries he would pass, and for the fourth time, yet not the last, would look the miles of Confederate cannon in the mouth. Banks, whose movements were retarded and to some extent held in abeyance, from the causes already mentioned, promptly fell in with the Admiral's plans, and both commanders conferring freely, the details were soon arranged.
CHAPTER VIII. FARRAGUT PASSES PORT HUDSON.