water
with much anxiety. At ten o'clock it reached the wagon hubs, and covered
every foot of the ground; but soon after we were pleased to see that it
began to go down a little. Those of us who could not get into the wagons
had climbed the trees. At one o'clock it commenced to rain again, when
we managed to hoist a tent over the sick. At two o'clock the long-roll,
the signal for battle, was beaten in camp, and we could just hear, above
the roar of the water, the noise made by the men as they hurriedly
turned out and fell into line.

It will not do, however, to conclude that this was altogether a night of
terrors. It was, in fact, not so very disagreeable after all. There was
a by-play going on much of the time, which served to illuminate the
thick darkness, and divert our minds from the gloomier aspects of the
scene. Smith, the teamster who brought me across, had returned to the
mainland with the horses, and then swam back to the island. By midnight
he had become very drunk. One of the hospital attendants was very far
gone in his cups, also. These two gentlemen did not seem to get along
amicably; in fact, they kept up a fusillade of words all night, and so
kept us awake. The teamster insisted that the hospital attendant should
address him as Mr. Smith. The Smith family, he argued, was of the
highest respectability, and being an honored member of that family, he
would permit no man under the rank of a Major-General to call him Jake.
George McClellan sometimes addressed him by his christian name; but then
George and he were Cincinnatians, old neighbors, and intimate personal
friends, and, of course, took liberties with each other. This could not
justify one who carried out pukes and slop-buckets from a field hospital
in calling him Jake, or even Jacob.

Mr. Smith's allusions to the hospital attendant were not received by
that gentleman in the most amiable spirit. He grew profane, and insisted
that he was not only as good a man as Smith, but a much better one, and
he dared the bloviating mule scrubber to get down off his perch and
stand up before him like a man. But Jake's temper remained unruffled,
and along toward morning, in a voice more remarkable for strength than
melody, he favored us with a song:

"Ho! gif ghlass uf goodt lauger du me;
Du mine fadter, mine modter, mine vife:
Der day's vork vos done, undt we'll see
Vot bleasures der vos un dis life,

Und