"Where will we find it?" growled back a chorus of voices.
"Jist about two mile from yere."
"Are you sure?" asked Col. Carmichael.
"Yes, cunnel, I'm dead sure."
The colonel called to several mounted officers, and away they all went out into the darkness. Co. G sank upon the ground and waited patiently. After a time the colonel returned and reported water a short distance ahead and marching about a mile they reached Middleton's and were again on familiar ground. It was midnight before the boys had drank their coffee and were under the blankets. They were very tired, having marched thirty miles.
March 25, an easy march was promised the men and they made eight miles to Moccasin Branch, where they halted for dinner. Again taking the road the march was increased to thirteen miles, part of the way through a brisk summer shower.
The boys were halted that night in a lane not far from the shack where the colonel was quartered. Air to breathe seemed scarce and fleas appeared to be unusually active. At the miserable house the officers, lying on the floor, were much annoyed by the persistent occupation of hogs underneath them. Fleas gnawed the officers and they scratched and scolded. Fleas tortured the saw-backs and they humped themselves and rubbed against the floor-joists, and as they toiled they grunted. Out in the lane the men of Co. G were too busy to sleep. That little farm in the wilderness might have been the main supply station for all East Florida fleadom.
It was an easy march May 26th of only nine miles to Picolata. When the boys approached the camp Maj. Place came out to meet them with the band. Then Co. G braced up in style and stepped off to the good old tune of "The Girls We Left Behind Us." Co. G remembered the girls.
The object of the expedition, besides giving the boys an outing, was to gather up any loose rebels in the vicinity of Dunn's Lake. Probably there were more soldiers in that command alone, than the rebels had in the entire state of Florida at the time. There was no accounting for novelties in the department, illustrative of experimental or theoretical campaigning. And while Folly Island was anchored permanently, its suggestive and appropriate title was indelibly stamped upon nearly every expedition organized in the Department, from September, 1863, until the close of the war.
It was an extensive experiment station for the engineer officers of the army and for the navy. There they could study the flight of missiles and their force; the relative difference in guns and mortars, and resistance of sand and iron armor. In short, it was a safe school where many a favorite matriculated and from which very few graduated. It was called warfare, because there were hospitals there and many graves.