Winning His Way Part 17

"Why don't you salute me, you Yankee villain?" said the fellow, stopping.

Paul was startled at the voice, looked the lieutenant in the face, and saw that it was Philip Funk. His face was bloated, and his eyes bloodshot. When he fled from New Hope after robbing Mr. Bond, he made his way south, joined the Rebels, and was now a lieutenant. Paul was so changed by sickness that Philip did not recognize him.

"Why don't you salute me, you dirty Yankee puppy?" said Philip, with an oath.

"I don't salute a traitor and a robber," said Paul.

Philip turned pale with anger. "Say that again, and I will cut your heart out!" he said, with a horrible oath, raising his sword and advancing upon Paul, who stood still and looked him calmly in the eye.

"Cowards only attack unarmed men," said Paul.

"What do you mean, sir, by calling me a robber, traitor, and coward?"

Philip asked, white with rage, not recognizing Paul.

"I mean that you, Philip Funk, committed robbery at New Hope, ran away from home, became a traitor, and now you show yourself to be a coward by threatening to cut out the heart of a weak defenceless prisoner."

"Who are you?" stammered Philip.

"My name is Paul Parker. I am a colonel in the service of the United States," Paul replied, not recognizing by any familiar act his old playmate and school-fellow.

Philip dropped his sword, and stood irresolute and undecided what to do.

A group of Rebel officers who had been wounded, and were strolling about the grounds, saw and heard it all. One was a colonel.

"What do you know about Lieutenant Funk?" he asked.

"He was my schoolmate. He committed robbery and came south to join your army," Paul replied.

The Colonel turned to the officers who were with him, and said, "This is the fellow who is suspected of stealing from the soldiers, and it is said that he skulked at Chickamauga."

"The cuss ought to be reduced to the ranks," said another.

Philip did not stop to hear any more, but walked rapidly away.

The next day he was arrested and brought before a court-martial, tried, and found guilty of hiding behind a stump when ordered to make a charge in battle, and of stealing money from the soldiers. The court ordered that he be stripped of his uniform and reduced to the ranks, and wear the "rogue's coat" through the camp. The coat was a flour-barrel, without heads, but with holes cut in the sides for his arms.

Philip was brought out upon the parade-ground, deprived of his sword and uniform, and compelled to put on the barrel, on which were written the words,

COWARD, ROBBER.

Thus, with two soldiers to guard him, with a drummer and fifer playing the Rogues' March, he was paraded through the camp. The soldiers hooted at him, and asked him all sorts of questions.

"How are you, b.u.mmer?" asked one.

"Did you pay your tailors with the money you stole?" asked another.

"Your coat puckers under the arms and wrinkles in the back," said another.

"He felt so big they had to hoop him to keep him from bursting,"

remarked one, who remembered how pompous Philip had been.

After being marched through the camp, he was set to work with a shovel, cleaning up the grounds. It was a sorry day to Philip. He wished he had never been born. He was despised alike by officers and soldiers. The officers made him do their dirty work, while the soldiers, knowing that he had not courage enough to resent an insult, made him the general scavenger of the camp. This treatment was so hard to bear that Philip thought of deserting; but he knew that if he was caught he would be shot, and did not dare to make the attempt. The slaves in the camp looked down upon him, and spoke of him as the "meanest sort of Yankee white trash." The soldiers turned him out of their tents. "We won't have a Yankee thief and coward in our mess," said they, and he was obliged to sleep under the trees, or wherever he could find shelter. He became dirty and ragged. His clothes dropped from him piece by piece, till he had nothing left but rags. He had little to eat. He had no friends. When he was sick, no one cared for him. Those were bitter days; but instead of being made better at heart by his punishment, he cursed and swore, and wished only that he could get whiskey to drink.

Winter set in. There came a cold, stormy night. Philip wandered about the camp to keep himself warm. He was weak and faint, and at last, tired, exhausted, and his teeth chattering with ague, crawled into a wagon, drew his old tattered blanket over his head, and after shivering awhile went to sleep. The teamsters found him there in the morning, stiff and cold. He had died during the night, with no friend near him, a vagabond, an outcast, despised by everybody.

The officer who had charge of the camp, when he heard that Philip was dead, called up a couple of soldiers who were in the guard-house for getting drunk, and said to them, "You were drunk yesterday, and for a punishment I sentence you to bury the camp-scullion who froze to death last night."

The teamster harnessed his horses, drove outside of the camp into a field, where the two soldiers dug a shallow grave, tumbled the body into it, threw back the earth, trampled it down with their feet, shouldered their shovels, and went back to camp as unconcerned as if they had buried a dog.

CHAPTER XX.

DARK DAYS.

When Paul's wound had healed sufficiently to enable him to travel, he was put into a freight car with his comrades and sent to the Rebel prison at Andersonville. The ride was long and hard, but the prisoners bore the jolting without a murmur, for they supposed they would soon be exchanged and sent North. They were doomed to bitter disappointment.

The prison was a yard enclosed by a high fence. There was a platform on the outside where the sentinels stood on guard, and ready to shoot any one who approached nearer than what they called "the dead line." The prisoners had no shelter from the scorching rays of the sun through the long summer days, nor from the sleety rains and freezing nights of winter. They dug holes in the ground with their hands, and made the cold, damp earth their bed. A slimy brook ran through the grounds, foul with filth from the camps of the Rebels. There was a marsh in the centre of the yard, full of rottenness, where the water stood in green and stagnant pools, breeding flies, mosquitos, and vermin, where all the ooze and sc.u.m and slops of the camp came to the surface, and filled the air with horrible smells. They had very little food,--nothing but a half-pint of coa.r.s.e corn-meal, a little mola.s.ses, and a mouthful of tainted bacon and salt, during each twenty-four hours. They were herded like sheep. The yard was packed with them. There were more than twenty thousand in a place designed for half that number.

When Paul and his comrades reached the prison, they were examined by the officer in command, a brutal fellow named Wirz, who robbed them of what money they had. The gate opened, and they pa.s.sed in. When Paul beheld the scene, his heart sank within him. He had suffered many hardships, but this was an experience beyond everything else. He was still weak. He needed nourishing food, but he must eat the corn-meal or starve.

Everywhere he saw only sickening sights,--pale, woe-begone wretches, clothed in filthy rags, covered with vermin. Some were picking up crumbs of bread which had been swept out from the bakery. Others were sucking the bones which had been thrown out from the cook-house. Some sat gazing into vacancy, taking no notice of what was going on around them,--dreaming of homes which they never were again to behold. Many were stretched upon the ground, too weak to sit up, from whose hearts hope had died out, and who were waiting calmly for death to come and relieve them from their sufferings. Thousands had died. One hundred died on the day Paul entered, and another hundred during the night. All day long the bodies lay among the living in the sun. When the dead-cart came in, they were thrown into it like logs of wood. It was a horrible sight,--the stony eyes, the sunken cheeks, the matted hair, the ghastly countenances, the swaying limbs, as the cart jolted along the uneven ground! More than thirteen thousand soldiers starved and murdered by the Rebels were thus carried out in the dead-carts.

The keepers of the prison were cruel. Paul saw a poor cripple crawl towards the fence and reach his hand over the dead line to get a bone.

Crack went the rifle of the sentinel, which sent a bullet through the prisoner's brain, who tossed up his hands, gave one heart-rending outcry, and rolled over--dead. On a dark and stormy night some of the prisoners escaped, but ferocious dogs were put upon their track, and they were recaptured. The hounds mangled them, and the Rebel officers had them tied up and whipped, till death put an end to their sufferings.

It was terrible to hear the coughing of those who were dying of consumption,--to see them crawling from place to place, searching in vain to find a shelter from the driving storms,--to hear the piteous cries of those who were racked with pains, or the moans of those who gave themselves up to despair. For want of proper food the prisoners suffered from scurvy;--their gums rotted, their teeth fell out, and their flesh turned to corruption; they wasted away, and died in horrible agony. It was so terrible to hear their dying cries, that Paul put his fingers in his ears; but soon he became accustomed to the sights and sounds, and looked upon the scenes with indifference. He pitied the sufferers, but was powerless to aid them. Soon he found that his own spirits began to droop. He roused himself, determined to brave out all the horrors of the place. He sang songs and told stories, and got up games to keep his fellow-prisoners in good heart. But notwithstanding all his efforts to maintain his cheerfulness and composure, he felt that he was growing weaker. Instead of being robust, he became thin and spare. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes sunken. There was a fever in his bones. Day by day he found himself taking shorter walks. At night, when he curled down in his burrow, he felt tired, although he had done no work through the day. In the morning he was stiff, and sore, and lame, and although the ground was cold and damp, it was easier to lie there than to get up. His hair became matted,--his fingers were long and bony. Each day his clothes became more ragged. When he first entered the prison, he tried to keep himself clean and free from vermin, but in vain. One day he went out to wash his tattered clothes, but the stream was so dirty he sat down and waited for it to become clear. He sat hour after hour, but it was always the same slimy, sickening stream.

The Rebels took delight in deluding the prisoners with false hopes,--telling them that they were soon to be exchanged and sent home; but instead of release, the dead-cart went its daily rounds, bearing its ghastly burden. That was their exchange, and they looked upon the shallow trenches as the only home which they would ever reach. Hope died out and despair set in. Some prisoners lost their reason, and became raving maniacs, while others became only gibbering idiots. Some who still retained their reason, who all their lives had believed that the Almighty is a G.o.d of justice and truth, began to doubt if there be a G.o.d. Although they had cried and begged for deliverance, there was no answer to their prayers. Paul felt that his own faith was wavering; but he could not let go of the instructions he had received from his mother.

In the darkest hour, when he was most sorely tempted to break out into cursing, he was comforted and rea.s.sured by Uncle Peter, an old gray-headed negro, who had been a slave all his life. Peter had been whipped, kicked, and cuffed many times by his hard-hearted, wicked master, not because he was unfaithful, but because he loved to pray, and shout, and sing. Through the long night, sitting by his pitch-knot fire in his cabin, Uncle Peter had sung the songs which lifted him in spirit almost up to heaven, whither his wife and children had gone, after cruel whippings and scourgings by their master. It was so sweet to think of her as having pa.s.sed over the river of Jordan into the blessed land, that he could not refrain from shouting:

"O my Mary is sitting on the tree of life, To see the Jordan roll; O, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll Jordan, roll!

I will march the angel march,-- I will march the angel march.

O my soul is rising heavenward, To see where the Jordan rolls."

He had given food and shelter to some of the prisoners who escaped from the horrible place, and had piloted them through the woods, and for this was arrested and thrown into the prison.

Uncle Peter took a great liking to Paul, and, when Paul was down-hearted, cheered him by saying: "Never you give up. Don't let go of de hand of de good Lord. It is mighty hard to bear such treatment, but we colored people have borne it all our lives. But 'pears like my heart would break when I think of my children sold down Souf." Uncle Peter wiped his eyes with his tattered coat-sleeve, and added: "But de Lord is coming to judge de earth with righteousness, and den I reckon de Rebs will catch it."

Uncle Peter dug roots and cooked Paul's food for him, for the Rebels would not allow them any wood, although there was a forest near the prison. Paul could not keep back the tears when he saw how kind Uncle Peter was. He thought that he never should weep again, for he felt that the fountains of his heart were drying up. Uncle Peter sat by him through the long days, fanning him with his old tattered straw hat, brushing the flies from his face, moistening his lips with water, and bathing his brow. He was as black as charcoal, and had a great nose and thick lips,--but notwithstanding all that Paul loved him.

Thus the days and weeks and months went by, Uncle Peter keeping the breath of life in Paul's body, while thousands of his comrades died.

There was no change in prison affairs for the better. There was no hope of release, no prospect of deliverance,--no words from home, no cheering news, no intelligence, except from other prisoners captured from time to time, and sent to the horrible slaughter-pen to become maniacs and idiots,--to be murdered,--to die of starvation and rottenness,--to be borne out in the dead-cart to the trenches.

Though Paul sometimes was sorely tempted to yield to despondency, there were hours when, with clear vision, he looked beyond the horrors of the prison to the time when G.o.d would balance the scales of justice, and permit judgment to be executed, not only upon the fiend Wirz, who had charge of the prison, but also upon Jeff Davis and the leaders of the rebellion. And though his sufferings were terrible to bear, there was not a moment when he was sorry that he had enlisted to save his country.

So through all the gloom and darkness his patriotism and devotion shone like a star which never sets.