He was standing by the rail looking over, when happening to glance back he saw by the ship's lantern what he thought was a familiar face. A second glance and he was sure. He remembered that fair-haired Ohio lad, and, smiling, he said:
“You're one of those Ohio boys who, marching southward from its mouth in the Ohio, drank the tributary river dry clear to its source, the mightiest achievement in quenching thirst the world has ever known. You're the boy, too, who told about it.”
The youth moved forward, gazed at him and said:
“Now I remember you, too. You're Dick Mason of the Winchester regiment. I heard the Winchesters were on board, but I haven't had time to look around. It was hot when we drank up the river, but it was hotter that afternoon at Perryville. God! what a battle! And again at Stone River, when the Johnnies surprised us and took us in flank. It was you Kentuckians then who saved us.”
“Just as you would have saved us, if it had been the other way.”
“I hope so. But, Mason, we left a lot of the boys behind. A big crowd stopped forever at Perryville, and a bigger at Stone River.”
“And we left many of ours, too. I suppose we'll land soon, won't we, and then take these Grand Gulf forts with troops.”
“Yes, that's the ticket, but I hear, Mason, it's hard to find a landing on the east side. The banks are low there and the river spreads out to a vast distance. After the boats go as far as they can we'll have to get off in water up to our waists and wade through treacherous floods.”
The question of landing was worrying Grant at that time and worrying him terribly. The water spread far out over the sunken lands and he might have to drop down the river many miles before he could find a landing on solid ground, a fact which would scatter his army along a long line, and expose it to defeat by the Southern land forces. But his anxieties were relieved early in the morning when a colored man taken aboard from a canoe told him of a bayou not five miles below Grand Gulf up which his gunboats and transports could go and find a landing for the troops on solid ground.
Dick was asleep when the boats entered the bayou, but he was soon awakened by the noise of landing. It was then that most of the Winchester and of the Ohio regiment discovered that they were comrades, thrown together again by the chances of war, and there was a mighty welcome and shaking of hands. But it did not interfere with the rapidity of the landing. The Winchester regiment was promptly ordered forward and, advancing on solid ground, took a little village without firing a shot.