ers, escaped the floating timbers and reached the imperiled
hospital. He found at once that it was impossible to carry back
the occupants or even to return with the wagon. He promptly ordered
the driver to unhitch the horses and swim them to shore, and to
return in like manner with two or three more wagons. Two more
wagons reached Beatty, but one team was carried down the stream
and drowned. He placed the three wagons on the highest ground,
though all the island was soon overflowed, chained and tied them
securely together and to stakes or trees. On the wagon boxes the
hospital tent was rolled, and the sick and wounded were placed
thereon with some of the hospital supplies. He, with those
accompanying him, decided to remain and share their fate, and he,
with some who could not get into the wagon, climbed into the trees.
The river at 10 P.M. had reached the hubs of the wagons and threatened
to submerge them, but soon after it commenced to recede slowly,
though a rain again set in, lasting through the night. Morning
found the river fast resuming its normal state, and the Colonel
and his rescuing party, with the hospital occupants, were all
brought safely to the shore.

Two diverting incidents occurred in the night. A false alarm led
to the long roll being beaten, the noise of which, and of the men
rapidly assembling, could just be heard on the island above the
roar of the water. Francis Union, of Company A of the 3d, was shot
in the dark and killed, without challenge, by a frightened sentinel.
This caused the long roll to be beaten.

Beatty mentions an entertainment, not on the bill, to which he and
others were treated while clinging to the trees above the flood,
and which was furnished by a soldier teamster (Jake Smith) who had
swum to the aid of the hospital people, and a hospital attendant,
both of whom were so favorably located as to enjoy unrestrained
access to the hospital "commissary." They both became intoxicated,
and then quarrelled over their relative _rank_ and social standing.
The former insisted upon the other addressing him as _Mr._ Smith,
not as "Jake." The Smith family, he asserted, was not only numerous
but highly respectable, and, as one of its honored members, no
person of rank below a major-general should take the liberty of
calling him "_Jake;_" especially would this not be tolerated from
"one who carried out pukes and slop-buckets from a field hospital"
--such a one should not even call