----One fading moment's mirth, With twenty watchful, weary,
tedious nights.--TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA.
[Sidenote: A WAGGISH JOURNALIST.]
We consumed many of the long hours in conversing, reading, and
whist-playing. Night after night we strolled wearily up and down our
narrow room, ignorant of the outer world, save through glimpses, caught
from the barred windows, of the clear blue sky and the pitying stars.
Still, endeavoring to make the best of it, we were often mirthful and
boisterous. Two correspondents of _The Herald_, Mr. S. T. Bulkley
and Mr. L. A. Hendrick, were partners in our captivity. Hendrick's
irrepressible waggery never slept. One evening a Virginia ruralist,
whose intellect was not of the brightest, was brought in for some
violation of Confederate law. After pouring his sorrows into the
sympathetic ear of the correspondent, he suddenly asked:
"What are you here for?"
"I am the victim," replied Hendrick, "of gross and flagrant injustice.
I am the inventor of a new piece of artillery known as the Hendrick
gun. Its range far exceeds every other cannon in the world. A week
ago I was testing it from the Richmond defenses, where it is mounted.
One of its shots accidentally struck and sunk a blockade runner just
entering the port of Wilmington. It was not my fault. I didn't aim at
the steamer. I was just trying the gun for the benefit of the country.
But these confounded Richmond authorities insisted upon it that I
should pay for the vessel. I told them I would see them ---- first, and
they shut me up in Castle Thunder; but I never will pay in the world."
"You are quite right. I would not, if I were you," replied the innocent
Virginian. "It is the greatest outrage I ever heard of."
[Sidenote: PROCEEDINGS OF A MOCK COURT.]
A fellow-prisoner had been elected commissary of our room, to divide
and distribute the rations. One evening a court was organized to try
him for "malfeasance in office." The indictment charged that he issued
soup only when he ought to issue meat--stealing the beef and selling
it for his personal benefit. One correspondent appeared as prosecuting
attorney, another as counsel for the defense, and a third as presiding
judge.
An extract from a Richmond journal being objected to as testimony, it
was decided that any thing published by any newspaper must necessarily
be true, and was competent evidence in that court. A great deal of
remarkable law was cited in Greek, Latin, German, and French. Counsel
were fined for contempt of court, jurors placed under arrest for going
to sleep. When the spectators became boisterous, the sheriff was
ordered to clear the court-room, and, during certain testimony, the
judge requested that the ladies withdraw.
The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and, after being harangued
in touching terms upon the enormity of his offense, the culprit was
sentenced to eat a quart of his own soup at a single meal. It was an
hilarious affair for that loathsome place, which swarmed with vermin,
and where the silence was broken nightly by the clanking and rattling
of the chains of convicts.
Many prison inmates exhibited daring and ingenuity in attempting to
escape. Castle Thunder was vigilantly and securely guarded, with a
score of sentinels inside, and a cordon of sentinels without.
[Sidenote: ESCAPE BY KILLING A GUARD.]
In the condemned cell adjoining our room was a Rebel officer named
Booth, with three comrades, under sentence of death on charge of
murder. All were heavily ironed. Nightly, as the time appointed for
their execution approached, they surprised us by dancing, rattling
their chains, and singing. At one o'clock on the morning of October
22d, we were awakened by shouts and musket-shots. The whole Castle was
alarmed, and the guard turned out.
With a saw made from a case-knife, Booth had cut a hole through the
floor of his cell, his comrades the while singing and dancing to drown
the noise. They were compelled to be very cautious, as a sentinel paced
within six feet of them, under instructions to watch them closely.
Filing off their irons, they descended cautiously through the aperture
into a store-room, where they found four muskets. In the darkness they
removed the lock from the door, and each taking a gun, crept into
another room opening to the street; struck down the sentinel, and
felled a second with the butt of a musket, knocking him ten or twelve
feet. At the outer door, a guard, who had taken the alarm, presented
his gun. Before he could fire, Booth shot him fatally through the head.
The three late prisoners ran up the street, several ineffectual shots
being fired after them by the guards, who dared not leave their posts.
At the long bridge across the James River they knocked down another
sentinel, who attempted to stop them. Traveling by night through the
woods, they soon reached the Union lines.
A considerable number of prisoners smeared their faces with croton-oil
to produce eruptions. The surgeon, called in at exactly the right
stage, pronounced the disease small-pox. They were driven toward the
small-pox hospital in unguarded ambulances, from which they jumped
and ran for their lives. It was a profound mystery to the physician
that patients should be so agile, until, examining one face after the
eruptions began to subside, he detected the imposition.
In Tennessee two Indiana captains were found within the Rebel
lines. They were actually in the secret service of the Government,
reconnoitering Confederate camps; but they passed themselves off as
deserters, and were brought to the Castle. One told me his story,
adding:
"They offer to release us if we will take the oath of allegiance to
the Southern Confederacy; but I cannot do that. I want to rejoin my
regiment, and fight the Rebels while the war lasts. I must escape, and
I cannot afford to lose any time."
He kept his own counsel; but the next night took up a plank and
descended to a subterranean room, whence he began digging a tunnel.
After several nights' labor, when almost completed, the tunnel was
discovered by the prison authorities. He immediately commenced another.
That also was found, a few hours before it would have proved a success.
Then he tried the croton-oil, and in ten days he was again under the
old flag.
[Sidenote: ESCAPE BY PLAYING NEGRO.]
One prisoner, procuring from the negroes a suit of old clothing, a
slouched hat, and a piece of burnt cork, assumed the garments, and
blackened his face. With a bucket in his hand, he followed the negroes
down three flights of stairs and past four sentinels. Hiding in the
negro quarters until after dark, he then leaped from a window in the
very face of a sentinel, but disappeared around a corner before the
soldier could fire.
Another was sent to General Winder's office for examination. On the way
he told his stolid guard that he was clerk of the Castle, and ordered
him:
"Go up this street to the next corner and wait there for me. I am
compelled to visit the Provost-Marshal's office. Be sure and wait. I
will meet you in fifteen minutes."
The unsuspecting guard obeyed the order, and the prisoner leisurely
walked off.
Captain Lafayette Jones, of Carter County, Tennessee, was held on the
charge of bushwhacking and recruiting for the Federal army within
the Rebel lines. If brought to trial, he would undoubtedly have been
convicted and shot. He succeeded in deluding the officers of the prison
about his own identity, and was released upon enlisting in the Rebel
army, under the name of Leander Johannes.
[Sidenote: ESCAPE BY FORGING A RELEASE.]
George W. Hudson, of New York, had been caught in Louisiana, while
acting as a spy in the Union service. Returning to the prison from a
preliminary examination before General Winder, he said:
"They have found all my papers, which were sewn in the lining of my
valise. There is evidence enough to hang me twenty times over. I have
no hope unless I can escape."
He canvassed a number of plans, at last deciding upon one. Then he
remarked, with great nonchalance:
"Well, I am not quite ready yet; I must send out to buy a valise and
get my clothes washed, so that I can leave in good shape."
Three or four days later, having completed these arrangements, he
wrote an order for his own discharge, forging General Winder's'
signature. It was a close imitation of Winder's genuine papers upon
which prisoners were discharged daily. Hudson employed a negro to leave
this document, unobserved, upon the desk of the prison Adjutant. Just
then I was confined in a cell for an attempt to escape. One morning
some one tapped at my door; looking out through the little aperture, I
saw Hudson, valise in hand, with the warden behind him.
"I have come to say good-by. My discharge has arrived." (In a whisper,)
"Put your ear up here. My plan is working to a charm. It is the
prettiest thing you ever saw."
He bade me adieu, conversed a few minutes with the prison officers, and
walked leisurely up the street. A Union lady sheltered him, and when
the Rebels next heard of Hudson he was with the Army of the Potomac,
serving upon the staff of General Meade.
[Sidenote: ESCAPED PRISONER AT JEFF. DAVIS'S LEVEE.]
Robert Slocum, of the Nineteenth Massachusetts Volunteers, was taken
to Richmond as a prisoner of war. In two days he escaped, and procured,
from friendly negroes, citizen's clothing. Then passing himself off
as an Englishman recently arrived in America by a blockade-runner, he
attempted to leave the port of Wilmington for Nassau. Through some
informality in his passport, he was arrested and lodged in Castle
Thunder. Employing an attorney, he secured his release. Still adhering
to the original story, he remained in Richmond for many months. He
frequently sent us letters, supplies, and provisions, and made many
attempts to aid us in escaping. One day he wrote me an entertaining
description of President Davis's levee, at which he had spent the
previous evening.