The “branch” was a little brook, sometimes running over sand-bars, sometimes filtering through them, and occasionally settling into pools, which were our bathing places. It was a happy relief to be out of sight of the barracks and alone. We clung to this under all sorts of difficulties and restrictions—sometimes going out with a patrol—sometimes squeezing through on parole, and holding fast to it, until we left Camp Groce in the cold weather of December.
The bath being taken, we walked leisurely back, wondering that so few sought this relief from the misery of prison. At the barracks our sailor cook had prepared the breakfast, which was set out on the long table. He blew his boatswain’s whistle, and all members of the mess hurried at the call. I had felt poor when I arrived at Camp Groce. I had expected to broil beef on sticks, and bake dodger in a dodger pot, and live on my ration as the Texans did. I was amazed at the extravagance I beheld, and when Captain Dillingham, with a sailor’s heartiness, invited me to join the navy mess, I hinted to him that probably I should become insolvent in a fortnight, if I did. The Captain laughed at the idea. He said there was plenty of money in Texas—he had never seen a country that had so much money—and it was the easiest thing to get it—anybody would lend you all you wanted—the only fault he had to find was, that after he got it he couldn’t spend it. Now, making reasonable allowances for nautical exaggeration, this was true. Sometimes a secret Unionist—sometimes a Confederate officer fairly forced his money upon us. They took no obligation, save the implied one of our honor; and the manner of payment, and the specie value of their Confederate funds, they left entirely to ourselves. To spend this money was a harder task. To change this easily gotten spoilt paper into something of real intrinsic worth was to acquire wealth.
When breakfast was finished, I took up a little French volume of ghost stories (which I read over five times carefully in the course of the next five months), and spent on it and some military works the next four hours. “Prisoners have nothing to do but to eat;” so at the end of four hours we had our breakfast over again. When “dinner,” as it was called, was finished, the Captain stoutly asserted that a load of wood must be got, and somebody must volunteer to get it. The Captain volunteered, so did Lieutenant Sherman and myself, so did another officer cheerfully, and two more tardily; but the mass of closely confined prisoners were too weak and too dejected, and they shrunk back from the effort that this work would cost them, preferring to stay idle and listless in their horrid prison. Those of us who volunteered, seized a couple of dull old axes, and proceeded to head-quarters.
“We are going out for wood to cook with,” said the Captain to the lieutenant that we found there, “and we must have an arbor to keep the sun off those sick fellows, or they’ll all die, and you’ll have nobody to exchange. Wake up one or two of your men, and send them out with us.”
The lieutenant reckoned he could not, he hadn’t a man to spare, all were on guard who hadn’t gone off to a race. The Captain pointed to the axes and said, “we were all ready to go.” This struck the lieutenant as a powerful reason, and he reckoned he would let a nigger hitch up the mules, and then let us go without any guard, but we must not go across the “branch.” The Captain replied that we would not go a great way across the “branch;” but he was fond of liberty, he said, and would not be circumscribed by “branches.” The lieutenant insisted on the “branch,” there had been orders given to that effect, he reckoned. The Captain did not care anything about orders—what difference could it make to Jeff Davis, he asked, whether we cut wood on this side of the “branch” or the other. The lieutenant could not answer this question, so he said, coaxingly, “Well, you won’t go a great ways on the other side, will you?”
This little difference being thus compromised, we mounted an old rickety “two-mule wagon,” and drove down the “wood road,” till a sentry, sitting on a stump, reckoned we had better stop. Stop! what should we stop for? He reckoned he’d orders to let nobody out. Orders! Why, we had just been up to head-quarters, and got orders to go out, and also the wagon; what more could he want. Then why had not the lieutenant sent down a man to tell him; it was no way to do business. The Captain said the wagon was pass enough as long as the mules would travel, and that we were going out for wood, which he thought altered the case; if he, the sentry, doubted it, there were the axes. The sentry looked at the axes, and could not doubt the evidence of his eyes, so he let us out.
The sun went down, and then began a long evening. There was nothing to do but to sit in the dark and talk of nothing. Then there was a detail made of two for the sick watch, and finding that I was “on,” I went to bed. In the morning there had been several late sleepers who wondered why people got up early and ran a coffee-mill. As a matter of course these individuals now wondered why people went to bed early and wanted to sleep. The topics, too, which they chose were exactly the topics that always keep you awake; and if by chance you forgot them long enough to fall asleep, then there would be a furious argument on some important matter; and if that did not waken you, then some other man (who, like yourself, turned in at taps,) would lose patience and roar out, “taps,” “lights out,” “guard-house,” etc., etc.
In small assemblages men may wake up and fall asleep when they please, but in camps and barracks, where many men of different habits are brought together, there must be some uniform rule for all. The Confederates never enforced military usage upon us, much to the regret of all who were accustomed to it, and a few very early and very late individuals, some of whom sat up till after taps, and others of whom turned out before reveille, were an endless annoyance to each other and to all. I think no officer of experience ever ran this gauntlet without inwardly resolving that, if ever he got back to his own command, stillness and darkness should rule between taps and reveille; that with daylight every blanket should go out, and every tent be put in order; that every shaggy head should be clipped, and all the little regulations which weak-minded recruits think to be “military tyranny,” should be most rigorously enforced.
But as I tossed around and made these resolves, the little sailor who was acting as hospital steward came in with both hands full of prescriptions. We had two excellent and faithful surgeons at Camp Groce, Dr. Sherfy of the “Morning Light,” and Dr. Roberts of the Confederate service. They kept their little office outside of the lines, came round on their second visit in the afternoon, and during the evening made up their prescriptions. This evening the first watch took the prescriptions from the hospital steward, and received the directions. It was Lieut. Hays, of the 175th N. Y., a happy, generous, warm-hearted Irishman, youthful and with the humor and drollery of his race. He was always making fun when others were dull, and making peace when they were angry. Soon I heard him going round among the sick. “I will listen,” I thought, “and find out what I have to do when my watch comes.”
“Here’s your medicine now, Mr. Black,” I heard him say, “wake up and take it.”