"I hope, sir," said Colburn, "that you will give us comfortable quarters."
With a half-surprised expression, the major replied, dryly:—
"Oh! yes, sir; we will do the best we can for you."
"The best" proved ludicrously bad. Just before daylight we were taken into the city jail. Its foul yard was half filled with criminals and convicts, black and white, all dirty and covered with vermin. In its midst was an open sewer, twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, the grand receptacle of all the prison filth. The rising sun of that sultry morning penetrated its reeking depths, and produced the atmosphere of a pest-house.
We dried our clothing before a fire in the yard, conversed with the villainous-looking jail-birds, and laughed about this unexpected result of our adventure. We had felt the danger of wounds or death; but it had not occurred to either of us that we might be captured. One of the private soldiers had paid a dollar for the privilege of coming on the expedition. To our query whether he deemed the money well invested, he replied that he would not have missed the experience for ten times the amount. One youth, confined in the jail for thieving, asked us the question, with which we were soon to grow familiar:—
"What did you all come down here for, to steal our niggers?"
At noon we were taken out and marched through the streets. "Junius's" bare and bleeding feet excited the sympathy of a lady, who immediately sent him a pair of stockings, requesting if ever he met any of "our soldiers" suffering in the North, that he would do as much for them. The donor—Mrs. Arthur—was a very earnest Unionist, with little sympathy for "our soldiers," but used the phrase as one of the habitual subterfuges of the Loyalists.
The First Glimpse of Sambo.
While we waited in the office of the Provost-Marshal, I obtained a first brief glimpse of the inevitable negro. Just outside the open window, which extended to the floor, stood an African, with great shining eyes, expressing his sympathy through remarkable grimaces and contortions, bowing, scraping, and
"Husking his white ivories like an ear of corn."