Part 7

But as I tossed around and made these resolves, the little sailor who was acting as hospital steward came in with both hands full of prescriptions. We had two excellent and faithful surgeons at Camp Groce, Dr. Sherfy of the “Morning Light,” and Dr. Roberts of the Confederate service. They kept their little office outside of the lines, came round on their second visit in the afternoon, and during the evening made up their prescriptions. This evening the first watch took the prescriptions from the hospital steward, and received the directions. It was Lieut. Hays, of the 175th N. Y., a happy, generous, warm-hearted Irishman, youthful and with the humor and drollery of his race. He was always making fun when others were dull, and making peace when they were angry. Soon I heard him going round among the sick. “I will listen,” I thought, “and find out what I have to do when my watch comes.”

“Here’s your medicine now, Mr. Black,” I heard him say, “wake up and take it.”

“What is it?” asked the sick man.

“Oh! it’s blue pills to touch your liver; come, take it, and don’t be asking questions.”

“How many of them are there?” inquired the patient after swallowing several.

“There are just seven of them, but what’s that to you? it won’t do you any good to know it.”

“Why, the doctor said he would send me six. Perhaps you are not giving me mine.”

“Just you take what’s sent to you. If you don’t take the whole seven, they won’t touch your liver a bit; six would be of no use at all.”

The man with the untouched liver swallowed the pills, and soon I heard the first watch rousing another sick man with the same formula of “Here’s your medicine now, wake up and take it—it’s blue pills to touch your liver.”

“How many of them are there?” asked this patient.

“There are just six of them—what’s the use of your knowing?”

“Why, the doctor said he would send me seven—perhaps these are not mine.”

“No matter, six are just as good as seven, and seven are just as good as fifty. All you need do is to take what I give you, and it will touch your liver all the same.”

Much enlightened by this mode of distributing doses, and re-assuring patients, I went to sleep, and slept till one A.M., when the first watch called me, and I took my turn. It was rather dreary, sitting in the dark and cold, occasionally giving a man his medicine or a drink, and wishing for daylight. There was one poor fellow, also a lieutenant of the 175th, fast going in consumption. His constant cough, his restless sleep, his attenuated form, bright eye and hectic cheek, all told of the coming end. Yet with him there was nothing to be done but wait and watch.

Now this, of itself, was not such a bad sort of day; but there was a month of such days; and then another month, and then a third, and then many more. What wonder that the strongest resolutions failed!

Then death came in among our little company, and came again and again. Then sickness increased under the August sun. The long moss that hung down from the trees and waved so gracefully on the breeze, had betokened it long before it came, and the uncleaned camp and listless life made the prediction sure. It went on until all but one had felt it in some shape or other, and there were not enough well to watch the sick. It never left us, and down to our last day at Camp Groce the chief part of our company were frail and feeble and dispirited.

Near to the barracks stood a little shanty of rough boards, divided by a plank partition into two rooms. One of these had been assigned to Mr. Stratford and his wife, and the other after several weeks came into the possession of Col. Burrell of the 42d Mass., Dr. Sherfy, Capt. Dillingham and myself. After living amid the sickness, the discord, and the misery of the barracks, this room measuring ten feet by twelve, promised to four of us a quiet and retirement that amounted almost to happiness. We went to work upon our little house with all the zeal of school-boys, and positively look back upon it with affection. It boasted doors, but neither windows nor chimney. Its walls were without lath and plaster, and through innumerable chinks let in the wind. The Captain and I also messed with Mr. and Mrs. Stratford; so we had a double interest in the shanty, and when we had built ourselves bunks and swung a shelf or two, we went to work on our other half.

“What shall I do for a blanket line?” was one of the first questions I had asked after our arrival.

“Let me lend you mine,” said an officer of the “Morning Light,” “we sailors always hang on to our ropes.”

“I will take it this morning, with thanks; but I want something of my own. If there is anything I despise, it’s a soldier’s blanket in his tent after reveille.”

“We are not so particular here, I’m sorry to say,” said my friend; “and unless you can find a line among the sailors, you won’t find one in Texas.”

“I am going out in the woods this afternoon, with Mr. Fowler,” I answered, “and will try to get one there.”

Now, Mr. Fowler, the acting Master of the “Morning Light,” was an old sailor, who had hardly been on shore for forty years. But in his early boyhood he had watched the Indians at their work, and caught from them, as boys do, some of their simple medicines and arts. For years and years these facts had slept undisturbed in his mind. If any one had asked him, he would have said they were forgotten; but now, under the pressure of our wants, they, one by one, came back. With this long-time worthless knowledge, Mr. Fowler was now busily and usefully employed. He made Indian baskets of all shapes and sizes, and even bent his ash-slips into fantastic dishes. He made Indian brooms and fly-brushes, and wooden bowls, and wove grape-vine and black-jack into high-backed, deep-seated, sick-room chairs. Where others saw only weeds or firewood, he found remedies for half our diseases; and when the surgeon’s physic gave out, Mr. Fowler’s laboratory was rich in simples.

We went out on parole that afternoon, Mr. Fowler carrying his basket, and I, an axe. He called attention to the fact that these pecan nuts would be ripe by-and-by, and that those persimmons would be worth coming after when the frost should have sugared them, and he filled his basket as he walked and talked. Before long, we saw some clean black-jack vines hanging from the top-most branches of a tree. We tugged and strained a few minutes, and then a splendid vine came down, not thicker than a lady’s finger at the root, yet forty feet in length. It was flexible as a rope, and as I coiled it up, I said to Mr. Fowler, “I have got my blanket line.”

Having cut an ash stick for a broom, and a pecan log for an axe handle, we went back to camp, where, soon after, Mr. Fowler was busily engaged in pounding his ash stick to loosen the splints, and I, at work on the severest manual effort of my life, viz., whittling with a soft-bladed penknife, out of flinty pecan wood, an orthodox American axe-helve.

Some weeks passed, and then one of those events occurred which are doubly mortifying if you are then on the wrong side of the enemy’s lines. I was lying ill in my bunk when an excited individual rushed into the barracks and made me better by the announcement, that the train had brought up great news from Houston. Blunt was coming down through the Indian Territory with his rough borderers, and all the troops in Texas were to be hurried northward to repel the invasion. For several days and nights trains ran by our camp loaded with soldiers who howled horribly to our guards, who howled, horribly back to them. The _Houston Telegraph_ came filled with orders of General Magruder, directing the movement of his forces, and naming twenty-seven different battalions that were to hurry forward immediately. The General did not _publish_ such orders ordinarily, and this one looked like haste, excitement and alarm.

One night, about ten o’clock, an engine was heard hurrying up the road. As usual it stopped at the water-tank near our camp. In ten minutes important news had leaped from the engine to head-quarters; from head-quarters to the guard-house, and from the guard-house straight through the line of sentries into our bunks. The news was this: twelve Yankee gun-boats, twenty-four large transports, and six thousand men lay off Sabine.

The next day the train confirmed the news. We learnt, too, that Union men, in Houston, were bold and defiant, and talked openly of a change of masters. Our guards were in a ferment. They talked with us freely, and confessed that there were not three hundred troops between Houston and Sabine. “Your folks will seize the railroad and march straight on to Houston,” they said, “and then Galveston will have to go, and like as not you’ll be guarding us within a week.” “What splendid strategy,” said everybody. “Blunt has drawn all the forces in the State up to Bonham—there is nothing to prevent our coming in below; Magruder is completely out-generalled. We must forgive the two months of idleness since Vicksburg and Port Hudson fell.”

Another day came, and the excitement increased; another, and affairs seemed in suspense; a third, and there was a rumor that two gun-boats had been sunk, their crews captured, and that the “Great Expedition” was “skedaddling” (such was the ignominious term applied) back to New Orleans. There came yet another day, when we sat waiting for the train.

“The cars are late,” said one. “It is past three o’clock, and they should have been here at two.”

“That’s a good sign,” said another; “it shows they have something to keep them. When they come you will see Magruder is sending off his ordnance stores.”

“Then you don’t feel any fear about that rumor?”

“That rumor, oh no! It is the best sign of all. They never fail to get up such rumors when they are being beaten. Don’t you remember how, just before Vicksburg surrendered, we used to hear that Breckenridge had taken Baton Rouge, and Taylor was besieging New Orleans, and Lee had burnt Philadelphia?”

“Oh no,” said everybody, stoutly, “there is no danger. And how can there be? We know that there is nothing down there but a little mud fort, with fifty men in it, and six forty-two pounders. Our hundred-pound Parrots will knock it to pieces, and a couple of companies can carry it by assault. Oh no, all I am afraid of is, that _we_ shall be run off, nobody knows where.”

The whistle sounded and we waited for the news. The track ran through a deep cutting, which at first hid the body of the cars from our sight, but a man stood on the roof of the foremost baggage car and waved his hat. Presently a howl was given by those of our guard who were waiting at the station.

“What can that mean?” said everybody. “Very strange! surely there can be no bad news for us.”

The next moment, some one exclaimed, “Good heavens, what a sight! Look there!” I looked; the train was covered with the blue-jackets of our navy.

The officers of the “Clifton” and “Sachem” did not accompany their men. We heard that they were guilty of spiking their cannon, flooding their magazines, secreting their money, and other like offences, for which they were kept at Houston; later, however, they unexpectedly came up. A new Captain, who then commanded Camp Groce, ushered them in, and we welcomed them. The youngest of us then had been prisoners more than three months, and felt ourselves to be “old prisoners.” The Captain of the “Clifton” supped with us, and as he surveyed our little shanty, replete with black-jack lines, hat-racks of curiously twisted branches, knives, and spoons, and salt-cellars, neatly carved from wood, and pipes fashioned out of incomparable corn-cob, he said that these little luxuries made him feel sorry for us, for they showed him what straits we had been reduced to. I felt sorry for him as he said it, for the speech reminded me of the lessons reserved for him to learn. Later than usual we retired, excited with this unusual event. The barracks had just grown quiet, when the Captain in command suddenly re-appeared, his guard at his back. “The gentlemen who arrived to-day,” he said, in an agitated voice, “will please to rise immediately.” The new-comers rose, groped round for clothes and baggage in the dark; and as they dressed, asked what all this meant. The Captain vouchsafed no reply, but in a still more agitated voice, begged them to be as quick as possible. Whether they were going to be searched, or executed, or sent back to Houston, nobody could determine. They were marched off, and we, now wide awake, discussed the matter for some hours. The next morning disclosed our friends haplessly shivering around a small building, some three hundred yards distant. It appeared that strict orders had been sent up with the prisoners, directing that they should be confined separately, and hold no communication with us. The now unhappy Captain had not thought it worth while to read his orders until bed-time. Then he stumbled on the fiat of the stern Provost Marshal General, whose chief delight was to court-martial Confederate captains. Deeply dismayed, he had rushed to the guard-house for his guard, to the barracks for his prisoners, and executed the painful work of separation.

The Provost Marshal General had not enclosed subsistence in his order. In the absence of dodger-pots, the “old prisoners” had to take care of these new ones. We were not allowed to write or talk, to send messages or to receive them. The baskets, as they went and came, were searched, the dodgers broken open, and everything was done in a very military and terrible way. In a few days we received a present of pea-nuts from our friends. We were not fond of pea-nuts, and did not appreciate the gift. The basket travelled over as usual with their dinner, but carried no acknowledgment of the pea-nuts. In the afternoon Lieutenant Dane, of the signal corps, was seen approaching our lines with a prize—a prize that had neither predecessor nor successor—a leg of mutton. The lieutenant delivered the mutton across the line to one of us, and the notability of the event warranted him in saying before the guard:

“This is a present from Major Barnes. Did you get the pea-nuts we sent you this morning?”

“Yes, yes,” responded Captain Dillingham, on behalf of our mess; “yes, they’re very nice. We are much obliged to you.”

“Eat them,” said the lieutenant, “eat them. They won’t hurt you—eat them all.”

The Captain carried the leg of mutton in, and hurriedly took down the pea-nuts. We looked sharply at them, but saw nothing unusual. Why eat them _all_? “If they want us to do so, it must be done!” We proceeded to break the shells. Presently there was a shell—a sound and healthy shell—within which had grown a long, narrow slip of paper, rolled up tightly. It contained a single message, viz., that the covered handle of Mr. Fowler’s basket was in fact a mail-bag. From that time on, the watchful patrols would lift out the plates, and inspect the beef, and scrutinize the dodger, and then carry the mail-bag backward and forward for us.

With the increased number of prisoners, there had been a change in the command of the camp. The company of volunteers were relieved by a battalion of militia. To our surprise, the militia very far surpassed the volunteers, and did their business in a very soldierly way. The battalion was commanded by Lieutenant-Colonel John Sayles, a lawyer of considerable distinction in Texas. The Lieutenant-Colonel was a man of few words, very quiet, very kind, and rarely gave an order that did not effect an improvement.

On the Sunday after he assumed command, Colonel Sayles informed me in his quiet way, that there would be Divine service in the grove, and invited me and all the prisoners to accompany him. There had been a reverend gentleman preaching at Camp Groce the Sunday before I arrived, who had been seeking a chaplaincy, and had assumed what he supposed was a popular train of argument; as for instance, warning his beloved brethren that the chief horror of eternal punishment would be meeting the President of the United States there. I do not care to hear irreverent things said in the pulpit, nor do I think it the part of an officer to listen voluntarily to denunciations of his government, yet I felt assured that Colonel Sayles would not invite me to anything of that kind, and I thought I could best acknowledge his civility by accepting.

When the clergyman who officiated first caught sight of the prisoners, forming one-half of his audience, he evinced a little embarrassment. He alluded to this as he began his sermon, and spoke happily of the breadth of the Christian faith, extending to all conditions of men, and enabling enemies to stand together and worship at one altar. His prayer was chiefly an affecting and beautiful petition on our behalf. He spoke of the tender ties that were severed, and besought consolation for our distant dear ones, who must be now in anxiety watching our fate. He prayed, too, that “we their captors and keepers, may have grace to treat them as becomes Christian soldiers, resisting the evil passions of our hearts and the evil counsels of wicked and cruel men.”

After the services were concluded, we were introduced to the clergyman, Mr. McGown, of Huntsville. He visited us in our quarters, ministered to our sick, and was always one of our most welcome visitors. He had been with Houston in the war of Texan independence, and was one of the heroes of San Jacinto. His acquaintance with the General had been intimate, and he entertained us with many interesting anecdotes of him and tales of the former war.

These anecdotes of General Houston then possessed for us unusual interest. When some of the older prisoners had been sent to the State Prison at Huntsville, they were halted a few minutes on the outskirts of the town. As they waited there, a tall, imposing old man approached and asked, who was the United States officer highest in rank. Captain Dillingham was pointed out to him as the senior naval officer. Walking up to him and extending his hand, he said, in a deep, emphatic voice, “My name is Houston, sir. I have come to say to you, gentlemen, that I do not approve of such treatment for prisoners of war. No prisoner of war shall ever be put in a jail with my consent.”

The death of General Houston occurred just before I reached Texas. Many stories were told of his great personal power, and strange incidents of his wondrously romantic life. The forebodings of his celebrated letter were all realized before he died, for his oldest son was in the ranks—his warmest friends and supporters were scattered and slain, and ruin and desolation brooded over the State which he had established and so long directed and controlled. He was guarded in the expression of his political sentiments, but occasionally addressed the troops, speaking from the _Texan_ point of view. He never took the oath of allegiance to the Confederate Government. A short time before his death travellers were required to have a Provost Marshal’s pass, and to procure a pass they must take the oath. The General had neither taken the oath nor procured a pass. He set out, however, on a journey and proceeded till one of the provost guard halted him and demanded his pass.

“My pass through Texas,” said the old man, in his sternest tone, “is San Jacinto.”

The Texan soldier looked at him for a moment. “I reckon,” he said, “_that_ pass will go as far in Texas as any a Provost Marshal ever wrote. Pass an old San Jacinto.”

Colonel Sayles was soon succeeded by Major James S. Barnes of the same battalion. The Major was a Georgian by birth, an old Texan by residence, and a man of great general information, and so far as we were concerned, in every thought and word and deed a perfect Christian gentleman. He told stories with a graphic simplicity I have never heard excelled, and was so pleasantly reasonable and so enticingly good-natured that even our wayward sailors consented to be led by a landsman, and allowed that he was as good a man as a rebel could be. One day as the Major passed through the barracks chatting with the well and cheering up the sick, he hinted at the uncertainty of exchange and at coming “northers,” and advised us to prepare for the worst by building ourselves chimneys and fire-places. He promised to provide an old negro chimney-builder to engineer the work and teams to haul the material. The dwellers in the shanty quickly availed themselves of the offer. But nothing could induce those in the barracks to go and do likewise. So weak and dispirited were all that the difficulties appeared insurmountable. When the frost came and found them still prisoners, they piled sand on the floor, and making fire upon it sat there and shivered, while the smoke floated over them and found its way out through the holes in the roof.

We, who were wise betimes, cut our logs in the woods, dug up our clay on the neighboring hill-side, and waited the arrival of “Uncle George.” This uncle came in time, and led the work. A hole was cut in Mr. Stratford’s room—the logs were notched and crossed, the chimney splints were split and laid up, and the whole was properly cemented together, and daubed over with rich clay mortar.