1863.]

RESCUED FROM THE RIVER.

345

when the Rebel yawl approached within twenty feet, tore the letters in pieces and threw them into the Mississippi. The boat was nearly full. After picking me up, it received on board two scalded men who were floating near, and whose groans were heart-rending.

We were deposited on the Mississippi shore, under guard of four or five soldiers in gray, and the yawl went back to receive the remainder. Among the saved I found Surgeon Davidson. He was unable to swim, but some one had carefully placed him upon a hay-bale. On reaching the shore, he sat down upon a stool, which he had rescued from the river, spread his overcoat upon his knee, and deposited his carpet-sack beside him. It was the first case I ever knew of a man so hopelessly shipwrecked, who saved all his baggage, and did not even wet his feet.

The boat soon returned. To my infinite relief, the first persons who sprang to the shore were "Junius" and Colburn. Sartorially they had been less fortunate than I.

One had lost his coat, and the other was without shoes, stockings, coat, vest, or hat.

There, in the moonlight, guarded by Rebel bayonets, we counted the rescued, and found that just sixteen-less than half our number-were alive and unharmed. All the rest were killed, scalded, or wounded.

Some of the scalded were piteous spectacles. The raw flesh seemed almost ready to drop from their faces; and they ran hither and thither, half wild from excruciating pain.

None of the wounded were unable to walk, though one or two had broken arms. The most had received slight contusions, which a few days would heal.

The missing numbered eight or ten, not one of whom was ever heard of afterward. It was impossible to

346 THE KILLED, WOUNDED, AND MISSING.

[1863.

obtain any correct list of their names, as several of them were strangers to us and to each other; and no record had been made of the persons starting upon the expedition.

We were two miles below the city, whither the lieutenant of our guard now marched us.

On the way, one of our party enjoined my colleague and myself

"You had better not say Tribune to the Rebels. Tell them you are correspondents of some less obnoxious journal."

Months before, I had asked three Confederate officers -paroled prisoners within our lines:

"What would you do with a Tribune correspondent, if you captured him?" With the usual recklessness, two had answered :—

"We would hang him upon the nearest sapling."

This remembrance was not cheering; but as we were the first correspondents of a radical Northern journal who had fallen into the enemy's hands, after a moment's interchange of views, we decided to stand by our colors, and tell the plain truth. It proved much the wiser

course.

One of the rescued men, coatless and hatless, with his face blackened until he looked like a native of Timbuc. too, addressed me familiarly. Unable to recognize him, I asked:

"Who are you?"

'Why," he replied, "I am Captain Ward."

* Commander, not of the tug, whose captain was killed, but of the soldiers guarding it and the barges.

348

CONFINEMENT IN THE VICKSBURG JAIL. [1863.

When the explosion occurred, he was sitting on the hurricane roof of the tug. It was more exposed than any other position, but the officers of the boat had shown symptoms of fear, and he determined to be where his revolver would enable him to control them if they attempted to desert us.

Some missile struck his head and stunned him. When he recovered consciousness, the tug had gone to the bottom, and he was struggling in the river. He had strength enough to clutch a rope hanging over the side of a barge, and keep his head above water. Permitting his sword and revolver, which greatly weighed him down, to sink, he called to his men on the blazing wreck. Under the hot fire of cannon and musketry, they formed a rope of their belts, and let it down to him. He fastened it under his arms; they lifted him up to the barge, whence he escaped by the hay-bale line.

At Vicksburg, the commander of the City Guards registered our names.

"I hope, sir," said Colburn, "that you will give us comfortable quarters."

With a half-surprised expression, the major replied, dryly:

Oh! yes, sir ; we will do the best we can for you." "The best" proved ludicrously bad. Just before daylight we were taken into the city jail. Its foul yard was half filled with criminals and convicts, black and white, all dirty and covered with vermin. In its midst was an open sewer, twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, the grand receptacle of all the prison filth. The rising sun of that sultry morning penetrated its reeking depths, and produced the atmosphere of a pest-house.

We dried our clothing before a fire in the yard, conversed with the villainous-looking jail-birds, and laughed

1863.]

THE FIRST GLIMPSE OF SAMBO.

349

about this unexpected result of our adventure. We had felt the danger of wounds or death; but it had not occurred to either of us that we might be captured. One of the private soldiers had paid a dollar for the privilege of coming on the expedition. To our query whether he deemed the money well invested, he replied that he would not have missed the experience for ten times the amount. One youth, confined in the jail for thieving, asked us the question, with which we were soon to grow familiar:

"What did you all come down here for, to steal our niggers?"

At noon we were taken out and marched through the streets. "Junius's" bare and bleeding feet excited the sympathy of a lady, who immediately sent him a pair of stockings, requesting if ever he met any of "our soldiers" suffering in the North, that he would do as much for them. The donor-Mrs. Arthur-was a very earnest Unionist, with little sympathy for "our soldiers," but used the phrase as one of the habitual subterfuges of the Loyalists.

While we waited in the office of the Provost-Marshal, I obtained a first brief glimpse of the inevitable negro. Just outside the open window, which extended to the floor, stood an African, with great shining eyes, expressing his sympathy through remarkable grimaces and contortions, bowing, scraping, and

แ Husking his white ivories like an ear of corn."

Rebel citizens and soldiers were all about him; and, somewhat alarmed, I indicated by a look that he should be a little less demonstrative. But Sambo, as usual, knew what he was doing, and was not detected.

The Provost-Marshal, Captain Wells, of the Twenty