current against her she seemed destined to the fate of the "Carolina," when her officers bethought them of towing, and so moved her slowly up stream. As she dropped her anchors opposite the American camp, her crew gave three loud cheers, in defiant answer to the British. That evening the British army, in two columns, under Keane and Gibbs, moved forward, the former by the levee road, the latter under cover of the woods, to within six hundred yards of the American lines, where they encamped for the night. But there was little sleep or rest for them. The American riflemen, with individual enterprise, bushwhacked them without intercession, driving in their outposts and picking off picket after picket, a mode of warfare that the English, fresh from Continental etiquette, indignantly branded as barbarous.
Jackson, with his telescope, had seen from the Macarty house the line of Pakenham's action, and set to work to resist it, giving his aids a busy night's work. He strengthened his battery on the levee, added a battery to command the road, reinforced his infantry, and cut the levee so that the rising river would flood the road. The Mississippi proved recreant, however, and fell, instead of rising, and the road remained undamaged.
The American force now consisted of four thousand men and twenty pieces of artillery, not counting the always formidable guns of the "Louisiana," commanding the situation from her vantage ground of the river. The British columns held eight thousand men.
The morning was clear and frosty; the sun, breaking through the mists, shone with irradiating splendour. The British ranks advanced briskly in a new elation of spirits after yesterday's success. Keane marched his
