DISAPPOINTMENT AND GREAT SUFFERING
The next morning the ship weighed anchor, with many of us on deck in high spirits. Soon after getting under way, the ship was hailed by a gunboat, lying in Hampton Roads, with "Where are you bound?" The captain of the Illinois shouted back through his trumpet, "Fort Delaware." Oh, horror of horrors! our hearts sank within us; visions of exchange, of home and friends, vanished in a twinkling. Doomed to further incarceration in a detestable Yankee prison, when we had expected in a few short hours to be free and with friends! With hope, aye, certainly of relief, dashed to the ground, our feelings may be better imagined than expressed in words. The doom of the damned, "Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire," can not be much worse. The Yankee guards on board the ship were at once on the alert, and with harsh and insolent commands, ordered and compelled, at point of bayonet, all the prisoners to get off the deck, and would not allow, after this, more than six or eight men on deck at a time; sentinels with loaded guns and fixed bayonets stood at the hatchways above us, and there was no chance to take the ship. One scoundrel threatened to shoot me as I stood at the foot of the ladder, with my hand on it, awaiting my turn to go on deck. He said to me in an insolent tone, "Take your hand off that ladder." I did so, then he said, "If you are an officer, why don't you dress like an officer?" I replied, "It is none of your business how I dress." Then he said, "Damn you, I will shoot you," bringing down his cocked gun on me, when I stepped back out of sight, thinking "discretion the better part of valor." How much the seventy men in the plot regretted not putting that plot into execution can never be told.