Page:The Immortal Six Hundred.djvu/98

   names had been called for exchange should pack up their belongings and be ready to leave the prison pen on a moment's notice. This brought back hope and drove from our hearts despair; yet doubt still held on, and the high board fence about the prison pen shut us in from liberty and the world without. At 3 o'clock p. m., August 20th, the order came "Fall into line all you men whose names shall be called and be ready for exchange." The roll-call was made, five hundred and fifty sound, healthy men, and fifty wounded men fell into line and marched by fours out through the prison gate— not for exchange, as we fondly hoped, but to torture as brutal and wanton, as cowardly as was ever inflicted upon helpless prisoners of war by the most barbarous nations of savage man. While we stood in line in the prison yard awaiting the order to move there were some most pathetic as well as ridiculous scenes enacted between comrades who had stood in line of battle together, were captured