bridge, the bridge itself covered with workmen, and boats swarming by
its side.

Harry felt a thrill and a shudder which were almost simultaneous.
Then came a deep muffled roar from the two armies on the ridges looking
at each other. But as the roar died it was succeeded by the rapid,
stinging fire of rifles. The Mississippians in their pits and cellars
near the bank of the river were sending a hail of bullets upon the
bridge builders.

The rest of the Southern army stood by and watched. Harry knew that
Lee and Jackson would make their chief defense on the ridges, but the
Mississippians were there to keep the enemy from being too forward.
So deadly were their rifles that every workman fled off the bridge to
the Union shore, save those who were struck down upon it, falling into
the water.

Then came a pause, a period of intense waiting, short, but seemingly
long, even to the veteran generals, after which the gallant builders,
who truly deserved the name of the bravest of the brave, ventured again
upon the bridge in the face of those terrible Mississippi rifles.
A blast of death again blew upon them. Bullets in hundreds struck upon
bodies or rattled on timbers. The workmen could not live in the face of
such a fire, and those who had not been slain retreated again to their
own side of the stream. A third time the heroic bridge builders
returned to their work, and a third time they were driven back by the
deadly Mississippi hail. Harry felt pity for them.

"I never saw anything braver," he said to Dalton.