One intensely cold night our wood had given out, and so I took the large iron poker and commenced prying off the wainscoting of the room for fuel, and by morning I had completely stripped one side. That morning when the Sergeant came in he raised a great row about it, threatening to punish the one who had done it. I told him that I was the one, and that I had considered it a military necessity, and that if we were not furnished with wood, he would wake up some morning and find the old jail burned down. He said I should be reported and punished for destroying government property, but the only thing done was to give us thereafter a more liberal supply of fuel.
We occupied a front room in the north-west corner of the jail, and in the room back of us were twenty-nine more reb deserters and a large, powerful negro, who had been placed there by his master as a punishment for some alleged misdemeanor. There was only a board partition between the two rooms, and it was not long before I had established communication with our neighbors, by cutting a hole through the partition large enough to allow us to carry on conversation. Upon our entrance into the jail they had deprived us of our case knives that we had carried with us thus far, for fear we would cut our way out with them.
But I had a screw driver to a gun which they happened to overlook in their search. This I sharpened on the bricks on which the stove rested, and then commenced making an outlet for our escape. I took a strong cord, and lashed the screw driver to a round stick of stove wood, and at night removed one of the sick men, and commenced by punching across two boards in the floor just over the joist, to cut through the floor. It was hard work, but by spelling each other, we had the two boards completely loose before midnight. Upon removing the loose boards we found that there was a ceiling of the same thickness still between us and freedom. The floor and ceiling were both Norway pine, and very hard, and as we could not work with our short handled chisel we adopted another plan for that.
We took the large poker which I had used to tear off the wainscoting, and heating it red hot in the stove, commenced burning holes through the under ceiling. We had a pail of water for drinking, and when it blazed up too much, we would dash on a cup full of water. This was slow work, but just at daylight we had removed the last board and then carefully swept up all traces of our work, and placing the boards back in their place, carried the sick men back and laid them over them. Our windows were grated, and the room below was used as a store room and there were no grates at the windows there.
Once down in that room after dark, and we could easily make our escape. Everything went along smoothly that morning. The guard came in to bring our breakfast and empty our slop pail, without any suspicion that any thing was wrong, but about ten o’clock the Sergeant came up with a guard, and commenced looking around as though in search of something.
I knew instinctively what was up, but as he had the stove removed and commenced poking around the brick platform without saying a word, I could not restrain my laughter, and asked him if he had lost something; saying that if he had, perhaps I might tell him where to find it. He did not seem to take kindly to my offer of assistance, nor feel in a mood to enjoy the pleasure his frantic efforts to find the lost treasure, appeared to afford me. In fact he seemed to take it as a piece of Yankee impertinence. After satisfying himself that there was nothing under the stove, he had us all take up our blankets and other traps, without deigning to tell us what it was all for.
We all cheerfully complied with his order except the two sick rebs, who were too weak to get up. After thoroughly searching every other part of the room, he had the two sick men removed, and there discovered the loose boards and seemed satisfied and pleased. Was that what you was looking for Sergeant? said I. If you had told me what you wanted I could have told you where to look when you first came up, and saved you all this trouble. You’ens Yanks think you are d—d cute, don’t you? was all the reply I received. He left the guard in the room while he went and got a carpenter to repair the floor; He soon returned with a carpenter, and told him to nail them boards down securely. I told some of my associates, to keep him interested, by asking him how he discovered the hole, and I would fix the carpenter.
Carelessly lounging up to where he was working, I said in a tone that could not be heard by anyone else: “I can get those boards up easier if you break the nails off.”
He replied in the same undertone: “I don’t care a d—n how soon you get them up when I get away.”
I watched him, and saw that he followed my suggestion, breaking the nails in two with the claw of his hammer, so that they only a little more than went through the flooring. After he had finished the Sergeant inspected the work, and judging from the number of nails that it was securely done, took his guard and went away.