Previous to this threatened outbreak I had again tried my own chance at escaping. It was now November 4, 1864, a cold blustering day, and the prisoners in their rags and almost barefooted stood and shivered in the naked field. At four o'clock a dozen were paroled and allowed to go out to the woods and carry in some fuel.
Lieutenant Fritchie and myself managed to mix ourselves among this little paroled company, and forgot to return to the enclosure. We helped a little in the fuel getting, and then suddenly disappeared in the pine forests. For some days we crept about in the great pine woods, scarcely knowing our direction or where we were going. Our leaving had been so sudden that we were planless. Here and there we stumbled onto a darkey, who never hesitated to bring us corn hoe cake or whatever eatables he might happen to have in his cabin. The slaves universally were the prisoners' friends, and they knew a hundred times more about the war and its object than their plantation masters ever supposed. Many an escaping prisoner was fed by them and, with the north star as a guide, conducted to safety. Many an army movement was made possible by loyal negroes. Barring an occasional Union white man, they were the only friends the soldiers had in the South.
Lieutenant Fritchie and I had some queer adventures while we wandered about the woods of South Carolina during this little leave of absence from the Confederates. We did not see a single white man, save one, and he tried to shoot us. One night we lodged in an open-topped corn-crib, not knowing in the darkness that we were quite close to an inhabited farmhouse. When daylight came we peeped over the corn-crib and were much astonished to see a woman at her wash-tub on the back porch of a cabin close by. She must have seen our heads, for that very moment she stopped her washing and entered the cabin. Shortly she appeared again, followed by a man, who took one long steady look at the corn-crib; then he entered the cabin, and we knew it was to get his gun. Very quick resolution and action on our part became advisable. A little plowed field only separated our corn-crib, at the back, from a thick piece of woods. In a moment the man was out again on the porch, bearing a musket.
"Drop to the ground behind the crib and run to the woods," said Fritchie. "I'll keep watch on the man. I'll drop down too. When you are across wave your hand if he is not coming, and then I'll run." In a moment's time I was running across the plowed field, keeping the crib between me and the porch of the cabin. The man with the musket never saw me. I waved to Fritchie; he, too, started on the run, and to this hour I laugh to myself when I picture to my mind Fritchie, a short, stumpy fellow, tumbling absolutely heels over head in his haste to cover that bit of plowed ground.
Very shortly we heard bloodhounds bellowing. We knew too well what that meant. Numbers of escaping prisoners had been torn to pieces by them. That was the common way of catching runaway slaves and prisoners of war down South. They hunt "niggers" that way to-day down there.
By hard running, turns and counter-turns, and frequent crossing and recrossing little streams, we threw the dogs off our track, and slept until night in the thicket. The wind blew hard and cold that night, and as we stood secreted under a thorn-tree by the roadside two men passed, so close we could have touched them. Something told us they, too, were escaping prisoners. We tried to attract their attention enough to be sure. One of us spoke, scarcely more than whisper. Instantly and in alarm the two men bounded away like scared wolves. Days afterward we found out that they had been not only fleeing prisoners, but were, indeed, two of our personal friends.
The next night was fair, and a full round moon lighted up the sandy desert with its oasis of tall, immense pine trees. The white winding road of sand that seemed to have been abandoned for a hundred years was almost trackless. Here and there, too, we saw an abandoned turpentine camp, the spiles still in the trees and the troughs lying rotting at their feet.
There was nothing but silence there, and loneliness, and moonlight. Here in the quiet night, if anywhere in the world, two poor escaping prisoners of war would be in no danger of a foe.
For hours we trudged along, going where we knew not, when suddenly to our amazement two mounted cavalrymen stood right in our way and called to us to surrender. There was nothing to do but to obey. Our capture had been an accident. These two officers, a captain and a lieutenant, had been riding the country trying to catch some deserters from their army and had blundered on to us. They started with us to Lexington jail, some miles away. The captain rode a dozen yards or so ahead, with a revolver in his hand. I trudged along in the sand at his side, faithfully hanging on to his stirrup strap. The lieutenant and Fritchie followed us in a like manner in the moonlight. It seems to have been a romantic occasion, when I think of it now; we two Federals and these two Confederates, there alone in the moonlight, and the big pine trees and the white sands about. I could not help reflecting, though, how many a captured prisoner had never been accounted for. Possibly we should never see Lexington jail. It would be an easy thing for these men to leave our bodies there in the sand somewhere. There were few words at first as we plodded our slow way in the moonlight. At last my captain and I entered into lively conversation about the South in general, and then both of us hoped the war would soon come to an end. To my surprise the young captain confided to me that he was, at heart, a Union man. "And why in the Confederate army?" I asked, in astonishment. "Because," said the captain, "everybody in my village in South Carolina is. I would have been hooted to death had I remained at home. My father is a rich man; he is opposed to the war, but he, too, is in the service at Richmond."
"Under the circumstances," I said, "I being Union, and you being Union, why not look the other way a moment and let me try the time required to reach yonder clump of trees." "No, not a thought of it," he answered almost hotly. "You are my prisoner, I will do my duty." The subject was dropped, and in half an hour Fritchie and I were inside a stone cell in Lexington jail. "You can lie down on the stone floor and sleep if you want to," the jailer said, crustily. The two young officers said a cheery good-by and went away.