Page:The Overland Monthly Volume 5 Issue 3.djvu/4



proved it by dropping one by one into the cellar.

I remember well the instructions: "Feet first; back to the wall; get down on your knees; make a half-face to the right, and grasp the spike in the wall below with your right hand; lower yourself down; feel for the knotted rope below with your legs;" and one had but to drop in the loose straw shaken from hospital beds to be in the cellar.

To walk across that foul pit in the dark was no easy matter; but it was soon accomplished, and together we crouched at the entrance of the tunnel, waiting our turn. Only one at a time; and as about three minutes were consumed in effecting the passage, progress was quite slow.

Of our party, Randolph was the first to enter. "I'm going. Wait till I get through before you start," said he to me; and in he went.

It seemed that his long legs would never disappear; but a parting kick in the face, as he wriggled desperately in, quite re-assured me, and I took my station at the mouth of the hole, listening to my friend's subterranean scratching, and crawling, and hard breathing as he wormed along his difficult road. In the middle he stopped, and tried to tell me that he had not got through, but was resting —being attacked by severe palpitation of the heart; but his smothered speech was jargon to me, conveying only the idea that he was still there.

A moment, and he was again in motion, not to stop until the cool blast of air drawing through the tunnel gave the welcome assurance to me that the underground passage was clear. In I went. So well did the garment of earth fit, that I doubt if there was much windage, for at moments my movements corresponded somewhat to those of a bolt forcing its way through a rifled gun. Breath

failed when about two-thirds through, and I stopped to pant.

A score or more of vigorous kicks brought me toearth's surface, where Randolph awaited my coming with sundry whispered instructions about getting out without making undue noise, and without breaking my skull against the bottom of a board-fence.

He then crept away toward the street, keeping in the shadow of a high brick wall, as the sentinels were in full view both over and through this dilapidated fence, leaving me to assist in turn and instruct the Colonel, who could now be heard thundering through the tunnel. Dirty, but jubilant, we were soon standing in the shadow of a low brick arch, outside of which a sentinel paced backward and forward, coming sometimes to within two yards of our position. Arranging a meeting on the corner of the second street below, one after the other stole out of the archway, the turning of the sentinel's back being the signal to creep noiselessly along by the housewall.

All worked well. We met, as agreed, and arm in arm, whistling and singing, turned the corner and struck out, strong and hopeful, for home and liberty.

There, in the very heart of the enemy's stronghold, knowing well that every avenue leading to it was guarded, as a nation guards its threatened Capital; fully aware that but a few hours could elapse before cavalry, aided perhaps by dogs, would be on our track; with night our only protection, the North Star our only guide, and but a very general idea of the country, we declared the affair quite a success, and talked about hot baths in Baltimore, (of which we stood sorely in need) and luxurious dinners all the way from Washington to Boston.

A few days before leaving the prison, we took into consideration another plan of getting to the liaes of our army.

Instead of crossing the James, it was proposed to keep the left bank of the river, strike into the country by a north