"Yes."
"Then what were you doing there?"
"That is precisely what my friend and I were trying to find out, while you kept us for two hours under a fire of hell from our own batteries."
Then he explained:
"You remember that to the left of your position, half a mile or so away, there lay a swamp. It was utterly impassable when the lines were drawn, and both sides neglected it in throwing up the breastworks. Well, that swamp slowly dried up during the summer, and it left something like a gap in both lines, but the gap was so well covered by the batteries on both sides that neither bothered to extend earthworks across it. My friend and I were in charge of pickets and rifle-pits that day, and we went out to inspect them. Somehow—I don't know how—we got lost on the swamplands, and, losing our bearings, we found ourselves presently within the Confederate lines. To say that we were embarrassed is to put it mildly. We were scared. We didn't know how to get back, and we couldn't even surrender for the reason that we were not in uniform but in fatigue dress, and therefore technically, at least, in disguise. There was nothing about us to show to which army we belonged. As an old soldier, you know what that meant. If we had given ourselves up we should have been hanged as spies caught in disguise within your lines. In our desperate strait we went to you and stood there for an hour or two under the worst fire we ever endured, while we extracted from you the geographical information that enabled us to make our way back to our own lines under cover of darkness."
At that point he grasped my hand warmly and said:
"Tell me, how is Joe? I hope he is 'touching up' something that responds as readily as the Railroad Iron Battery did that evening."
From that hour until we reached New Orleans, four days later, there was no barrier between the two groups of passengers. We fraternized completely. We told stories of our several war experiences that had no touch or trace of antagonism in them.
Incidentally, we exhausted the steamer "Lady Gay's" supplies of champagne and cigars, and when we reached New Orleans we had a dinner together at the St. Charles hotel, no observer of which would have suspected that a few months before we had been doing our best to slaughter each other.