THE IMMORTAL SIX HUNDRED
counted on. We knew we could not cut through another wall by daylight, so we concluded to force up that door at all risks. Four or five of us got under it, pushing with our hands and heads until Dave Prewitt could get the poker under the edge of the door. When he pried down on the poker he started the heavy body on the door to moving. Well, I have heard the artillery of Jackson in the Valley; I heard the roar of the guns at Gettysburg; I have heard the heavenly thunders of the Rocky Mountains; but I say to you, all these sounds combined were but pop-gun reports when compared to the noise those barrels made above our heads rolling over the casemate floor; and yet, strange as it may be, the noise did not disturb the slumbers of a whole company of the 157th New York Volunteers, asleep in the very next casemate. After waiting for a time, to hear if the noise alarmed the sentinels about the fort, we began to ask each other, "Shall we go back or go on?" (We could not see each
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