As night came on, the sky grew blacker and blacker, and at length the storm burst upon us in all its fury. For a time our arrangements worked nicely, and our rubber blankets formed a good protection overhead, but after a while the rain discovered the weak spots, and little streams of water began to trickle into our faces and run down our backs. Sleep was out of the question, so we all got up and huddled about the embers of the smouldering fire, but to little purpose. The heavens seemed literally to have opened their flood-gates, and the floods descended. If we stepped off the rails we immediately sank knee-deep in mud, and our beds would have delighted the soul of the most fastidious porker; drenched from head to foot, with no prospect of even a wink of sleep, we waited as patiently as might be for the coming day.
Towards morning the storm abated in violence; so we built up a roaring fire, and made ourselves comparatively comfortable, our spirits returning with the light, and by ration time we were as bright as if we had passed a most delightful night. Having dried our clothes and blankets as well as the circumstances permitted, about nine o'clock we rejoined the regiment, most of whom had been drowned out in the night, and suffered an experience similar to our own. The cavalry had returned in the night, after riding about thirty miles, their progress having been stopped by the burning of a bridge near Onslow Court House. They were followed back by a long procession of contrabands, with faces turned eastward.
About half-past nine that same morning, we started on our return march. The rain had subsided into a fine drizzle, and the roads were somewhat inclined to be muddy. The head of the column pushed along as though hotly pursued by the enemy, stopping for about twenty minutes at the end of the first five miles. We hurried on through Pollocksville without halting, taking a breathing spell and dinner just beyond the village, and then the fun commenced. Mud was king that day. Not like our New England mud, barely deep enough to soil your boots, but real old Southern mud, fathomless, immeasurable. Every little while we were greeted with solemn farewells by unfortunate ones disappearing rapidly from view, bound on a terrestrial voyage to China by the air, or rather earth, line. One poor wretch, stepping into a deceitful puddle, descended to his waist; then, unable to proceed either up or down, concluded to remain where he was, for want of a better place, until, having furnished much sport to the crowd, two of his comrades, taking pity on his helpless condition, seized him by the shoulders, and landed him once more on terra firma.
Every mile or two, streams, intended for peaceful, babbling brooks, but which, swollen by the rains, had became raging torrents and angry rivers on a small scale, crossed the road. Some we forded, others we waded for lack of better means of transit. Occasionally rail bridges spanned the stream at the side of the road, tempting the unwary one, and some unlucky one would now and then disappear from them into the roaring flood, and emerge looking quite moist and crestfallen, with his gun in excellent order for use. Little streaks of clay cropped up here and there along the road, holding the feet as in a vice, and he was lucky who retained his shoes in the struggle. Still, on rushed the van, as if life itself was at stake, if camp were not reached at an early hour; so, resigning ourselves to our fate, we tumbled along with the rest. The column must have resembled in appearance the army in the stampede of Bull Run. Every man running a race with his neighbor, all discipline thrown to the winds, and the one who reached camp first, the best fellow.
Although, without exception, the hardest day in all our campaign, we never had a merrier one. There were more jokes in that afternoon than in an ordinary month; and it may be set down as an axiom, that, in the army, the harder the work, and the more dismal the circumstances, the better humor the men will be in. But all misery has an end, and so did ours; for, about five o'clock that Saturday afternoon, we found ourselves safe and sound in the old barracks, without having fired a gun or lost a man. So ended our second expedition, we having on this last day marched, in a little more than seven hours, including all halts, twenty-one miles, on the muddiest road it has ever been our lot to see, or hope to see, disfigure the face of the earth.
In addition to the letters from home, pleasing rumors greeted us on our return, to the effect, that, for a time at least, we were to know no more expeditions, but were soon to take up our quarters in Newbern as provost guard. After time to rest and discuss this good news in its every possible feature, we were rewarded for past labors by the reading of the order for the 45th Mass., Colonel Codman commanding, to relieve the 17th Mass., at Newbern, on the 25th instant. The intervening time was spent in preparations for departure, collecting our numerous movables, taking down shelves, hiring donkey-carts, etc., and on the 24th we retired to our bunks in old Camp Amory for the last time, the anticipation of the morrow engrossing every thought, and rendering sleep of little moment.
HELIOTYPE PRINTING CO. BOSTON.
QUARTERS OF COMPANY A, AT NEWBERN.