four in the morning of June 14th
I must go . Come soon again , Blake . We have had a good talk -- or a bit of one . '' At four in the morning of June 14th , when John Penhallow with a group of older engineers looked across the twenty-one hundred feet of the James River they were to bridge , he realized the courage and capacity of the soldier who had so completely deceived his wary antagonist . Before eleven that night a hundred pontoons stayed by barges bridged the wide stream from shore to shore . Already the Second Corps under Hancock had been hastily ferried over the river . The work on the bridge had been hard , and the young Captain had had neither food nor rest .