came sufficiently intoxicated to reveal many
important matters that we would not otherwise have learned.

He bustled to the gate, growling all the time about being troubled so
much, unlocked it, and admitting us, led us up the outside stairway,
and then into the upper room. I now saw why the General called the
place a "hole," and truly I thought the name was appropriate. It was
only thirteen feet square, destitute of every convenience, without
chairs, beds, or anything of the kind. There were in it five or six
old, miserable-looking men, who had not been washed for months. The
place looked hard to me, and I shuddered at the idea of taking up my
abode in such a den. But I soon found that I was not to enjoy that
luxury.

Said the jailor to the captain, "Where shall I put him?"

"Below, of course," was the reply.

The jailor then advanced to the middle of the floor, and taking a
large key from his pocket, knelt down and unlocked two rusty locks;
then, with a great effort, raised a ponderous trap-door just at my
feet. The hot air and the stifling stench smote me back, but the
bayonets of the guards were just behind, and I was compelled to move
forward again. A long ladder was next thrust down through the
trap-door, and the inmates warned to stand from under. A mingled
volley of cries, oaths, and questions ascended, and the ladder was
secured. The captain then ordered me to descend into what seemed more
like Pandemonium than any place on earth. Down I went into the
cimmerian gloom--clambering step by step to a depth of fully thirteen
feet; for the place, as I afterwards learned, when I had more leisure
for observation, was a cube, just thirteen feet each way. I stepped
off the ladder, treading on human beings I could not discern, and
crowding in as best I might.

[Illustration: "Down I went into the cimmerian gloom--clambering step
by step to a depth of fully thirteen feet."--Page 129.]

The heat was so great that the perspiration broke from me in streams.
The foeted air made me for a time deadly sick, and I wondered whether
it could be possible they would leave human beings in this horrible
place to perish. The thought of the black hole at Calcutta, where so
many Englishmen died, rushed over me. True, this was done by the cruel
and savage East Indians, while we were in the hands of "our Southern
brethern," the "chivalry;" but I could not perceive that this
difference of captors made any difference of treatment.

My