se for the coast above the city.
About this time I learned that I should find no boats along the shore
between Charleston and the mouth of the Santee, everything able to float
having been destroyed to prevent the escape of the negroes and the
desertion of the soldiers. I was ferried over the Broad River by a
crusty old darky who came paddling across in response to my cries of
"O-v-e-r," and who seemed so put out because I had no fare for him that
I gave him my case-knife. The next evening I had the only taste of meat
of this thirteen days' journey, which I got from an old negro whom I
found alone in his cabin eating possum and rice.

I had never seen the open sea-coast beaten by the surf, and after being
satisfied that I had no hope of escape in that direction it was in part
my curiosity that led me on, and partly a vague idea that I would get
Confederate transportation back to Columbia and take a fresh start
westward bound. The tide was out, and in a little cove I found an
abundance of oysters bedded in the mud, some of which I cracked with
stones and ate. After satisfying my hunger, and finding the sea rather
unexpectedly tame inside the line of islands which marked the eastern
horizon, I bent my steps toward a fire, where I found a detachment of
Confederate coastguards, to whom I offered myself as a guest as coolly
as if my whole toilsome journey had been prosecuted to that end.

In the morning I was marched a few miles to Mount Pleasant, near Fort
Moultrie, and taken thence in a sail-boat across the harbor to
Charleston. At night I found myself again in the city jail, where with a
large party of officers I had spent most of the month of August. My
cell-mate was Lieutenant H.G. Dorr of the 4th Massachusetts Cavalry,
with whom I journeyed by rail back to Columbia, arriving at "Camp
Sorghum" about the 1st of November.

I rejoined the mess of Lieutenant Byers, and introduced to the others
Lieutenant Dorr, whose cool assurance was a prize that procured us all
the blessings possible. He could borrow frying-pans from the guards,
money from his brother Masons at headquarters, and I believe if we had
asked him to secure us a gun he would have charmed it out of the hand of
a sentinel on duty.

[Illustration: LIEUTENANTS E.E. SILL AND A.T. LAMSON.]

Lieutenant Edward E. Sill, of General Daniel Butterfield's staff, whom I
had met at Macon, during my absence had come to "Sorghum" from a
fruitless trip to Macon for exchange,