night--being about sixty yards in advance of our pits, and always
composed of three men for each post. We found our three men numb with,
cold, two lying near the edge oL the woods, in a big hole made by a
shell, while the other stood guard. They had seen nothing and heard
nothing except the ordinary sounds of the night. The clouds reflected
the peculiar glow of many fires in front. It was not long till day. The
two men, my companions on post, whispered together, and then proposed
that I should take the first watch. Willis had returned to the line
with, the relieved vedettes. I had no objection to taking the first
watch, yet I hesitated, simply because the two men had whispered. I
fancied there was some reason for the request, and I asked bluntly why
they had decided it was my turn without giving me a voice in the matter.
You know it is the custom to decide such affairs by lot, unless some man
volunteers for the worst place. They replied that they were old friends,
and that as I was a stranger to them, the detail being made up from
various companies, they preferred lying together.

This explanation, did not seem very satisfactory, for the reason that in
two hours we should all be relieved; yet I consented, and they lay down
in the hole, which was little more than a mud-puddle, for fear of some
sudden, volley from the rebels.

The position of the man on watch at this point was just at the left
oblique from the other men, say about ten paces, and very near to a tree
which stood apart from the rest of the forest, a scraggy pine of second
growth, not very tall, but thick and heavy, with, its limbs starting
from the trunk as low as eight feet from the ground. I stood near this
tree, within reach of it by a leap. Our nearest vedette posts, right and
left, were a hundred yards from me--the one on the left being in the
woods, that on the right in the open. The country called the Peninsula
is low and flat and very swampy in many parts, and the great quantity of
rain that had now fallen for days and days had rendered the whole land a
loblolly, to use a common figure. I saw that just in front of me, about
thirty yards, there was a shallow ravine, and I began to think that it
was possible for an enterprising squad of rebels to sneak through this
ravine and get very near us before we knew it, and perhaps capture us;
such things had been done, if the truth was told, not only by the
rebels, but by many other people at war.

Beyond t