teen of
whisky. It was not easy getting back inside the lines, as the moon was
shining, but we got by the guards, and then my friends suggested that we
take our breast-plates off and put them on behind us, as the guards, if
they shot at all, would be firing in our rear. I took mine off and put
it on behind my pants, and just then somebody fired a gun, and the boys
said "run," and I started ahead, and the firing continued, and about
every jump I could hear and feel something striking my breast-plate
behind, which seemed to me to be bullets, and I was glad I had the
breast-plate on, though afterwards I found that the boys behind me were
firing off their revolvers in the air, and throwing small stones at my
breast-plate. Presently a bullet, as I supposed, struck me in the back
above the breast-plate, and I could feel blood trickling down my back,
and I knew I was wounded. O, I hankered for gore, before enlisting, and
while editing a paper, and now I had got it, got gore till I couldn't
rest. The blood run down my side, down my leg, into my boot, and I could
feel I was wading in my own blood. And great heaven's, how it did smell.
I had never smelled blood before, that I knew of, and I thought it had
the most peculiar, pungent, intoxicating odor. I ran towards my quarters
as fast as possible, fainting almost, from imaginary loss of blood, and
finally rushed into my tent, threw myself on my bunk and called loudly
for the doctor and chaplain, and then I fainted. When I came to I was
surrounded by the doctor, and a lot of the boys, all laughing, and
the chaplain was trying to say something pious, while trying to keep
a straight face. "Have you succeeded in staunching the blood, doc?" I
asked, in a trembling voice. He said the blood was quite staunch, but
the whisky could never be saved. I did not know what he meant, and I
turned to the chaplain and asked him if he wouldn't be kind enough to
say something appropriate to the occasion. I told him I had been a bad
man, had lied some, as he well knew, and had been guilty of things that
would bar me out of the angel choir, but that if he had any influence at
the throne of grace, and could manage to sneak me in under the canvass
anyway, he could have the balance of my bounty, and all the pay that
might be coming to me. The chaplain held up the breast-plate that had
been removed by kind hands, from the back portion of my person, and said
I had better take that along with me, as it would