The exchange was altogether suspended, and new prisoners were constantly arriving, until Libby contained several hundred officers.
Extravagant rumors of all sorts were constantly afloat among the captives; hardly a day passing without some sensation story. They were not usually pure invention; but in prison, as elsewhere during exciting periods, the air seemed to generate wild reports, which, in passing from mouth to mouth, grew to wonderful proportions.
[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
I had rather than forty pound I were at home.
Twelfth Night, or What you Will.
Transferred to Castle Thunder.
On the evening of September 2d, all the northern citizens were transferred from Libby to Castle Thunder. The open air caused a strange sensation of faintness. We grew weak and dizzy in walking the three hundred yards between the prisons.
That night we were thrust into an unventilated, filthy, subterranean room, nearly as loathsome as the Vicksburg jail. But we smoked our pipes serenely, remembering that "Fortune is turning, and inconstant, and variations, and mutabilities," and wondering what that capricious lady would next decree. At intervals, our sleep upon the dirty floor was disturbed by the playful gambols of the rats over our hands and faces.