Lieutenant Charles Pavie, of the Eightieth Illinois, who commanded Streight's artillery, came in with his coat torn to shreds; a piece of shell had struck him in the back, inflicting only a flesh wound. Upon feeling the shock, he instinctively clapped his hands to his stomach, to ascertain if there was a hole there, under the impression that the entire shell had passed through his body!
Prisoners Denounced as Blasphemous.
The prisoners bore their confinement with good-humor and hilarity. During the long evenings, they joined in the "Star-Spangled Banner," "Old Hundred," "Old John Brown," and other patriotic and religious airs. The Richmond Whig, shocked that the profane and ungodly Yankees should presume to sing "Old Hundred," denounced it as a piece of blasphemy.
Captain Brown and his officers, of the United States gunboat Indianola, were pointed out to me as men who had actually been in prison for three months. I regarded them with pity and wonder. It seemed utterly impossible that I could endure confinement for half that time. After-experiences inclined me to patronize new-comers, and regard with lofty condescension, men who had been prisoners only twelve or fifteen months! "The Father of the Marshalsea" became an intelligible and sympathetic personage, with whom we should have hobnobbed delightfully.
Thievery of a "Virginia Gentleman."
Simultaneously with our arrival in Richmond, a Rebel officer of the exchange bureau received a request from the editor of The World, for the release of Mr. Colburn. It proved as efficient as if it had been an order from Jefferson Davis. After ten days' confinement in Libby, Colburn was sent home by the first truce-boat. A thoroughly loyal gentleman, and an unselfish, devoted friend, he was induced to go, only by the assurance that while he could do no good by remaining, he might be of service to us in the North.
At his departure, he left for me, with Captain Thomas P. Turner, commandant of the prison, fifty dollars in United States currency. A day or two afterward, Turner handed the sum to me in Confederate rags, dollar for dollar, asserting that this was the identical money he had received. The perpetrator of this petty knavery was educated at West Point, and claimed to be a Virginia gentleman.
"Junius" suffered greatly from intermittent fever. The weather was torrid. In the roof was a little scuttle, to which we ascended by a ladder. The column of air rushing up through that narrow aperture was foul, suffocating, and hot as if coming from an oven. At night we went out on the roof for two or three hours to breathe the out-door atmosphere. When the authorities discovered it, they informed us, through Richard Turner—an ex-Baltimorean, half black-leg and half gambler, who was inspector of the prison—that if we persisted, they would close the scuttle. It was a refined and elaborate method of torture.
On one occasion, this same Turner struck a New York captain in the face for courteously protesting against being deprived of a little fragment of shell which he had brought from the field as a relic. A Rebel sergeant inflicted a blow upon another Union captain who chanced to be jostled against him by the crowd.