CHAPTER XXI.
placed in an iron cage—breaking out and attempting to dig through a brick wall—an unexpected surprise.
The next morning, we were all marched into a room on the opposite side of the hall, and to the south side of the jail, and were placed in an iron cage, made of flat bars two inches wide, and half an inch thick, firmly riveted together, and as I told the Sergeant, although we could not wear diamonds, we could look through them. We were packed into this cage like sardines in a box, scarcely having room to move. There were iron benches along the sides for us to sit upon, but lying down was quite out of the question.
When all was quiet that night, we thought as we could not sleep we would try and get out.
The door was fastened with a round iron prop that fitted into a socket in the floor, and was fastened to the door by a padlock. This prop we wrenched from its fastenings by reaching out through the diamond in the door, and then with it broke the lock, and the iron door swung back, giving us free egress to the room. The cage was about twenty feet long and eight feet wide, with a partition in the centre. This cage set in the middle of the room, and was about six feet from the walls of the room on all sides. With the bar thus wrenched off, we at once attacked the brick wall, and while some detached the brick, others held a blanket underneath to prevent the falling brick and mortar from falling to the floor, as they would make a noise that would attract the attention of those beneath us. We had made an opening nearly halfway through the outer wall, which was large enough for a good sized man to pass out, when most unexpectedly two more prisoners were brought in, and our operations were discovered, and the attempt to escape was again frustrated.
A guard was then placed in the room, and as we could not sleep, we spent the night in singing “Rally ’Round the Flag,” and other Union songs, and chaffing with the guard, who were nearly all, more or less, tinctured with Union sentiments, and only kept us from escaping, for fear of the consequence to themselves. Morning came and with it an order to get ready to go to Danville, Va.
I told the officer that I could not march on account of my inflamed legs, but he said that if I had got out of jail my legs would not have bothered me much, and he reckoned that it would do me good to take a walk anyway. And he would put us d—d Yanks where we wouldn’t bother him any more. So, after furnishing us with two days rations to last to Morgantown, they started four of us, Captain Alban, myself, and the two Union prisoners brought in the night before, whose names I do not now remember, under a guard consisting of a Lieutenant and four men, for a tramp over the mountains.
Our march over the mountains was a tedious one, interspersed now and then, however, with some amusing incident. We were in good humor with the guard, and laughed and joked along the road in a free and easy sort of way, and succeeded in making ourselves agreeable to them, gaining their confidence as much as we could, and after we had been marching half a day, a casual observer would have hardly distinguished the prisoners from the guard. We straggled along much the same as a dozen rebs would have done on a march by themselves.
On the afternoon of the first day’s march, we came along to a hickory grove, where about a dozen black and gray squirrels were sporting about on the top branches, gathering nuts, and I asked one of the guard to let me take his gun a minute and I would get a couple of them for our supper. He was about handing the gun to me, when the Lieutenant stopped him by saying: “You d—d fool, do you know what you are carrying that gun for? That Yankee might miss the squirrel and shoot you.”