Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/145

   Sumter they would drop down on the parapet in fear. Hallowell and his officers would beat them up with their swords. After this day there was only the general firing during the day, though at night our guns would be more rapidly fired, especially so our mortar guns. After we had been on the luxurious diet of four hardtack army crackers, one ounce of fat meat, and half a pint of sandy bean soup (which often tasted like it had been seasoned with soap), and with the bad drinking water, our condition was pretty bad. Our cooking was done outside of the prison stockade by negroes detailed for the purpose. What filth these chefs put into the soup we could not see or know; it was brought into us—we could eat it or let it alone. We did not expect, as prisoners of war in Yankee hands, to have all the delicacies served by a Delmonico, but we did expect enough of food to sustain life. But Draco Stanton and his lieutenants, Gen. J. G. Foster and Colonel Hallowell, had different