In and Out of Rebel Prisons

by A. Cooper

ESCAPED PRISONERS SEARCHING FOR THE ROAD AT NIGHT.

Being now out of provisions, much of our time was spent in looking for sweet potatoes along the road. Sometimes we would see a nice patch in front of some wayside house; but almost every house had a dog or two, and they ever seemed on the alert for tramps; and it was quite a risk to attempt to dig sweet potatoes with those dogs making such a racket, and we were often glad enough to get away without being detected, and even without the desired potatoes. How those dogs would bark! It seemed as though they would arouse the whole neighborhood with their eternal yelping. I took a solemn oath during that journey that if I ever lived to get free, I would thereafter shoot every dog I could find, and I pretty near kept that oath, too. We were not so much afraid of their biting us as we were that they would be followed by their masters with loaded guns; and often we would make a detour of a mile, rather than have attention attracted to us by those yelping curs.

The fifth night of our tramp was cloudy and dark, so much so that the little North Star, that had thus far been our guide, as well as the full moon that had lighted up our road, was completely hidden from our view, and we were left to grope our way as best we could. In the darkness we came to where the roads forked, and although there was a guide board, it was in vain that I tried by mounting Captain Hock’s shoulders and lighting matches, to read the directions, to find which road led in the right direction.

After talking the matter over, and consulting our little map as well as we could by the aid of lighted matches, we took the road to the right, and although it may seem paradoxical, for this once right was wrong.

We traveled on this road two or three miles, when we were satisfied that we should have taken the other fork, but thinking we would come to a road soon that bore in the right direction, we kept plodding along in the darkness and finally in the rain, and when near daylight we went into camp, we only knew we were in the woods somewhere in South Carolina, but in what particular portion of that state we could not tell. Of one thing we were satisfied, and that was that we were tired out and half starved. We spread our blankets on the wet ground and, with the rain falling in our faces, slept as soundly as though our bed was one of down instead of the wet ground.

Awaking about 10 o’clock, I started out on a reconnoissance, and, after carefully skirmishing around for an hour, found that we were near the Saluda river, and that there was a ferry near by, the river at this point being very wide. We did not wish to cross this river, and had tried hard to avoid it, but by taking the wrong road at the forks had run right onto it.

Instead of laying by this day, we started out to try to find a road that led in the right direction. We found some persimmons, which we gathered and ate to satisfy our hunger; but tramped all day in the rain until 4 o’clock in the afternoon before we found a road that seemed to run in the direction we wished to go. When we finally came to a road that seemed to point to the northwest, we pushed on rapidly for sixteen miles before halting, although we were hungry and tired; and when we finally came to another guide board, we found that we were only forty-four miles from Columbia. This was Tuesday, the 18th, and we had left Columbia the morning of the 14th, thus making an average of only eleven miles a day, or rather a night.

We had nothing to eat but raw corn, which we shelled from the cob, and munched as we walked. My legs had now became swollen and inflamed to such an extent that, had I been at home, I would not have thought I could walk a dozen blocks, still we marched sixteen miles that night, and the next morning we went into camp within the sound of passing cars. That night we started out again, but had not gone more than half a mile before we again came upon the river. This was discouraging for, as I have said, we did not wish to cross the river but to go in a parallel direction, and this road ended at a ferry.