Despite the cold, Dick and his comrades perspired all the morning over their labors and were covered with mud when the camp was finally constructed at some distance back of the Tennessee, on the high ground beyond the overflow.

The transports remained at anchor, but the fighting boats were to drop down the stream and attack the fort at noon the next day from the front, while the army assailed it at the same time from the rear.
The detachment of Pennsylvanians was by the side of Colonel Winchester's Kentucky regiment, and Colonel Newcomb and his staff messed with Colonel Winchester and his officers.

There was water everywhere, and before they ate they washed the mud off themselves as best they could.
"I suppose," said Warner, "that seventy per cent of our work henceforth will be marching through the mud, and thirty per cent of it will be fighting the rebels in Fort Henry.

I hear that we're not to attack until tomorrow, so I mean to sleep on top of a cannon tonight, lest I sink out of sight in the mud while I'm asleep." "There's some pleasure," said Pennington, "in knowing that we won't die of thirst.

You could hardly call this a parched and burning desert." But as they worked all the remainder of the day on the construction of the camp, they did not care where they slept.