Capture and Escape: A Narrative of Army and Prison Life

by John Azor Kellogg

As good fortune would have it, we struck in a soft sand bank. The train passed on without our being observed by the guard, and none of us were injured. The place was near Adam's Run, about twelve or thirteen miles from Charleston. We were without compass or map. A council was called, and all the pros and cons of the situation discussed. We concluded that by traveling east, we would, at all events, strike the coast, and if we failed in finding our troops, we might possibly run across one of our vessels.

Calculating our direction by the moon and stars, as near as we could, we left the railroad and plunged into a South Carolina swamp. Of all the doleful places on the face of God's green earth, I do not think there is another so hideous. The timber is a species of cypress, from which hangs a gray moss, from three to twenty feet in length. When it is high tide, the water is from two to six feet deep. At low tide the surface has the appearance of solid earth; but in fact there are only a few inches of soil, supported by the cypress roots, which spread over, or rather just under the surface, and form a network, through which the unwary traveler is liable to break at any moment, and find himself unceremoniously seated on a root with his feet hanging either in water, or in space below, as the case may be. Every few rods there is a bayou, or slough, frequented by alligators. All kinds of vines and hanging plants interlace the spaces between the trees, and render it tiresome and difficult to penetrate. Several kinds of birds with mournful cries, and myriads of frogs, make night hideous, while the air is fairly alive with mosquitoes and gnats, and every tussock of grass seems tenanted by the poisonous moccasin snake. Occasionally a huge alligator will flop into a neighboring slough with a splash, and the snap of his hungry jaws can be heard for rods.

Altogether, the traveling is neither pleasant nor swift; but through it all we toiled on. Starvation and imprisonment were behind us, and liberty and the dear old home to the front. Our progress was necessarily slow, and before we were fairly started, the sun began to gild the east with his rosy beams. As nearly as we could calculate, we had traveled in the neighborhood of five miles since leaving the railroad. By the rise and the fall of the tide, we knew that we could not be far from the coast. We had no provisions; we must either reach the shore or starve. Safety dictated that we should seek a thicket and hide during the daytime, but necessity commanded us to travel while we had strength, and so we toiled on.

At length we came to a ridge running through the swamp, at about a right angle to our line of march. While crossing it we suddenly saw two horsemen moving leisurely along over what we discovered to be a well-traveled road. Fortunately seeing them before they saw us, we threw ourselves on the ground among the scrub pines. They proved to be a Confederate officer and his negro servant, and passed within perhaps three or four rods without discovering us. It was a narrow escape. We carefully reconnoitered the ground, crossed the road, and again plunged into the swamp.

After traveling a mile or two farther, we again met with an obstruction that compelled us to come to a halt. We had reached an outpost of the enemy. Peering through the underbrush we reconnoitered the ground. Before us, in a ridge running through the swamp, was a squadron of Confederate cavalry. There was but one thing for us to do, and that was to keep quiet until night.

Throughout the whole long summer afternoon we lay in a thicket, within a quarter of a mile of the enemy's cavalry. Occasionally the long-drawn-out note of a horn was heard, followed by the baying of hounds. We had read of the famous "negro dogs," and had been told by friends who had escaped and been recaptured, that they were used by our enemies to hunt down fugitives, so that these sounds did not serve to lessen our disquietude, or to render our situation more pleasant.

The sun at length disappeared, however, without our being discovered, and darkness almost immediately followed the setting of the sun. Unfortunately, the night was cloudy. The moon and stars, which had been our guides the night before, were obscured. We could only guess our course by the direction of the wind, and an occasional glance at the heavens through a break in the clouds. We were nearly exhausted by fatigue and want of food.

The enemy's pickets were in our front, and must be passed that night or never. Watching, crawling, now through quagmire and slime, now over fallen trees and through creeping vines, our eyes blinded by the stings of poisonous gnats and mosquitoes, we toiled on.

Hark! What is that? A human voice in our front! It must be the picket line. No chance to pass it here. The ground is dry, and the snapping of a twig might betray us. Back—silently, stealthily, and then by the left flank, to the swamp. Wading out into it, we found a slough. Getting into the middle of that, we waded down in the direction of the picket line. If we made an occasional splash, we knew it could do no harm; alligators were plenty, and the noise might be attributed to them.

Silently, scarcely breathing, we trudged through the water—stagnant and poisonous with malaria, among the alligators, lizards, frogs and snakes—and at last, thank God! past the pickets. Then working our way through a mass of tangled vines, we were again out on a dry ridge, with the enemy behind us, and Old Ocean and Liberty not far distant.