The jury returned a verdict of guilty, and, after being harangued in touching terms upon the enormity of his offense, the culprit was sentenced to eat a quart of his own soup at a single meal. It was an hilarious affair for that loathsome place, which swarmed with vermin, and where the silence was broken nightly by the clanking and rattling of the chains of convicts.
Many prison inmates exhibited daring and ingenuity in attempting to escape. Castle Thunder was vigilantly and securely guarded, with a score of sentinels inside, and a cordon of sentinels without.
Escape by Killing a Guard.
In the condemned cell adjoining our room was a Rebel officer named Booth, with three comrades, under sentence of death on charge of murder. All were heavily ironed. Nightly, as the time appointed for their execution approached, they surprised us by dancing, rattling their chains, and singing. At one o'clock on the morning of October 22d, we were awakened by shouts and musket-shots. The whole Castle was alarmed, and the guard turned out.
With a saw made from a case-knife, Booth had cut a hole through the floor of his cell, his comrades the while singing and dancing to drown the noise. They were compelled to be very cautious, as a sentinel paced within six feet of them, under instructions to watch them closely. Filing off their irons, they descended cautiously through the aperture into a store-room, where they found four muskets. In the darkness they removed the lock from the door, and each taking a gun, crept into another room opening to the street; struck down the sentinel, and felled a second with the butt of a musket, knocking him ten or twelve feet. At the outer door, a guard, who had taken the alarm, presented his gun. Before he could fire, Booth shot him fatally through the head.
The three late prisoners ran up the street, several ineffectual shots being fired after them by the guards, who dared not leave their posts. At the long bridge across the James River they knocked down another sentinel, who attempted to stop them. Traveling by night through the woods, they soon reached the Union lines.
A considerable number of prisoners smeared their faces with croton-oil to produce eruptions. The surgeon, called in at exactly the right stage, pronounced the disease small-pox. They were driven toward the small-pox hospital in unguarded ambulances, from which they jumped and ran for their lives. It was a profound mystery to the physician that patients should be so agile, until, examining one face after the eruptions began to subside, he detected the imposition.
In Tennessee two Indiana captains were found within the Rebel lines. They were actually in the secret service of the Government, reconnoitering Confederate camps; but they passed themselves off as deserters, and were brought to the Castle. One told me his story, adding:
"They offer to release us if we will take the oath of allegiance to the Southern Confederacy; but I cannot do that. I want to rejoin my regiment, and fight the Rebels while the war lasts. I must escape, and I cannot afford to lose any time."
He kept his own counsel; but the next night took up a plank and descended to a subterranean room, whence he began digging a tunnel. After several nights' labor, when almost completed, the tunnel was discovered by the prison authorities. He immediately commenced another. That also was found, a few hours before it would have proved a success. Then he tried the croton-oil, and in ten days he was again under the old flag.