nto their ranks from
every direction. The bridge was repaired, Sheridan's command was soon
safe on the other side, and our hopes died away.

There are two little incidents connected with my capture that I ought
not to leave out, so I will go back to that event. The first one may
serve a good purpose if the reader is ever placed in similar
circumstances.

When I realized that we were in the hands of the enemy, but before they
had gotten to where I was, I lay down on my face in the ditch alongside
of the wounded and dead, pretending myself to be dead. I had the most
awful feeling while lying there imaginable, and felt that at any moment
I might be thrust through with a bayonet, and the feeling was so intense
that as soon as I heard the Yankees tramping about me and calling upon
the men to surrender, I got up and surrendered. If I had only had
presence of mind enough to have lain on my back and watched them from
the corner of my eye, I might have passed through the ordeal and escaped
after they left, as they did not remain long.

In the first place, the men were cavalrymen, and hence had no bayonets.
Then again, the Confederate bullets were hissing about their ears in
such a manner that they never would have thought of testing a "Johnnie
Reb" in that way in order to see whether he was really dead or playing
possum.

The other incident was the second night after our capture. It was still
raining, and the weather was quite cool for the season (it was about the
10th of May). We were all wet to the skin, and nearly starved. We were
stopped in a field, a guard placed around us, an old cow driven up and
shot, and we were told to help ourselves. So every fellow that could get
a knife went up and cut his own steak. They gave us some fence rails,
out of which we made little fires and broiled our cow meat. She may have
been tough and old, and I know we had no salt, but the meat was as sweet
to us as any porterhouse steak we had ever eaten.

We huddled together for the night like pigs, and slept comfortably,
notwithstanding we had tramped the earth into a mud hole.

But to go back to the crossing of the Chickahominy river. Once across
that river, the enemy seemed to have very little opposition to their
march toward the James.

I know it was a long, weary march, and their horses were giving out all
along the way. When a horse got too sore-footed to travel, he was shot,
and as we passed along we saw hundreds of these horses, wi