During a bitter winter rain, Confederate soldiers dug rifle pits near Fort Hindman through mud, hunger, and exhaustion, even tearing down the huts they had just built to use the logs to strengthen their defensive line and using boards as shovels. A Texan remembered that each man worked with the sense that every shovel of dirt in front of him might save his life. On Sunday morning, after the weather cleared, cannon fire shook the ground as the Confederates fiercely defended their line. Although they had been ordered to fight to the last man, white flags rose from the rifle pits that afternoon, surprising their leaders, and a Texan said surrender was the only intelligible thing they could do because the next charge would have annihilated them. The rifle pits stretched 700 yards across the peninsula from the fort to an impassable swamp.