A pack with whom they well agree,
Who're call'd the loyal company,
Or "Loyalists Associated,"
As by themselves incorporated.
Our food was call'd two-thirds in weight
Of what a soldier has to eat;
We had no blankets in our need,
Till a kind friend did intercede.
Said he, "The prisoners suffer so,
'Tis quite unkind and cruel, too;
I'm sure it makes my heart to bleed,
So great their hardship and their need."
And well to us was the event,
Fine blankets soon to us were sent;
Small the allowance, very small,
But better far than none at all.
An oaken plank, it was our bed,
An oaken pillow for the head,
And room as scanty as our meals,
For we lay crowded head and heels.
In seven days or thereabout,
One Jonas Weed was taken out,
And to his friends he was resign'd,
But many still were kept behind.
Soon after this some were parol'd,
Too tedious wholly to be told;
And some from bondage were unstrung,
Whose awful sufferings can't be sung.
The dread smallpox to some they gave,
Nor tried at all their lives to save,
But rather sought their desolation,
As they denied 'em 'noculation.
To the smallpox there did succeed
A putrid fever, bad indeed;
As they before were weak and spent,
Soon from the stage of life they went.
For wood we greatly stood in need,
For which we earnestly did plead;
But one tenth part of what we wanted
Of wood, to us was never granted.