Chapter XL

----Wheresoe'er you are That bide the pelting of this
pitiless storm, How shall your houseless heads and unfed
sides, Your looped and windowed raggedness, defend you?--KING
LEAR.

[Sidenote: "OUT OF THE JAWS OF DEATH."]

At dark, my three friends joined me. We went through the outer gate, in full view of a sentinel, who supposed we were Rebel surgeons or nurses. And then, on that rainy Sunday night, for the first time in twenty months, we found ourselves walking freely in a public street, without a Rebel bayonet before or behind us!

Reaching an open field, a mile from the prison, we crouched down upon the soaked ground, in a bed of reeds, while Davis went to find a friend who had long before promised us shelter. While lying there, we heard a man walking through the darkness directly toward us. We hugged the earth and held our breaths, listening to the beating of our own hearts. He passed so near, that his coat brushed my cheek. We were beside a path which led across the field from one house to another. Davis soon returned, and called us with a low "Hist!" We crept to the fence where he waited.

"It is all right," he said; "follow me."

He led us through bushes and lanes until we found our friend, leaning against a tree in the rain, waiting for us.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, "you are out at last. I wish I could extend to you the hospitalities of my house; but it is full of visitors, and they are all Rebels. However, I will take you to a tolerably safe place. I have to leave town by a night train in half an hour, but I will tell ---- where you are, and he will come and see you to-morrow."

[Sidenote: HIDING IN SIGHT OF THE PRISON.]

He conducted us to a barn, in full sight of the prison; directed us how to hide, wrung our hands, bade us Godspeed, and returned to his house and his unsuspecting guests.

We climbed up the ladder into the hay-mow. Davis and Wolfe burrowed down perpendicularly into the fodder, as if sinking an oil-well, until they were covered, heads and all. "Junius" and myself, after two hours of perspiring labor, tunneled into a safe position under the eaves, where we lay, stretched at full length, head to head, luxuriating in the fresh air, which came in through the cracks.

Wonderfully pure and delicious it seemed, contrasted with the foul, vitiated atmosphere we had just left! How sweet smelled the hay and the husks! How infinite the "measureless content" which filled us at the remembrance that at last we were free! Hearing the prison sentinels, as they shouted "Ten o'--clock; a--ll's well!" we sank, like Abou Ben Adhem, into a deep dream of peace.

Our object in remaining here was twofold. We desired to meet Welborn, and obtain minute directions about the route, which thus far he had found no opportunity to give us. Besides, we anticipated a vigilant search. The Rebel authorities were thoroughly familiar with the habits of escaping prisoners, who invariably acted as if there were never to be any more nights after the first, and walked as far as their strength would permit. Thus exhausted, they were unable to resist or run, if overtaken.

[Sidenote: CERTAIN TO BE BROUGHT BACK.]

The Commandant would be likely to send out and picket all the probable routes near the points we could reach by a hard night's travel. We thought it good policy to keep _inside_ these scouts. While they held the advance, they would hardly obtain tidings of us. We could learn from the negroes where they guarded the roads and fords, and thus easily evade them. Our shelter, in full view of the garrison, and within sound of its morning drum-beat, was the one place, of all others, where they would never think of searching for us.

On the second morning after our disappearance, _The Salisbury Daily Watchman_ announced the escape, and said that it caused some chagrin, as we were the most important prisoners in the garrison. But it added that we were morally certain to be brought back within a week, as scouts had been sent out in all directions, and the country thoroughly alarmed. Some of these scouts went ninety miles from Salisbury, but were naturally unable to learn any thing concerning us.

II. _Monday, December 19._

Remained hidden in the barn. There was a house only a few yards away, and we could hear the conversation of the inmates whenever the doors were open. White and negro children came up into the hay-loft, sometimes running and jumping directly over the heads of Wolfe and Davis.

At dark, another friend, a commissioned officer in the Rebel army, came out to us with a canteen of water, which, quite without food, we had wanted sadly during the day. He was unable to bring us provisions. His wife was a Southern lady. Reluctant to cause her anxiety for his liberty and property, imperiled by aiding us, or from some other reason, he did not take her into the secret. Like most frugal wives, where young and adult negroes abound, she kept her provisions under lock and key, and he found it impossible to procure even a loaf of bread without her knowledge.

With his parting benediction, we returned to the field where we had waited the night before, and found Lieutenant Welborn, punctual to appointment, with another escaped prisoner, Charles Thurston, of the Sixth New Hampshire Infantry.

Thurston had two valuable possessions--great address, and the uniform of a Confederate private. At ten o'clock, on Sunday night, learning of our escape, and thinking us a good party to accompany, he walked out of the prison yard behind two Rebel detectives, the sentinel taking him for a third officer. Slouching his hat over his face, with matchless effrontery he sat down on a log, among the Rebel guards. In a few minutes he caught the eye of Welborn, who soon led him by all the sentinels, giving the countersign as he passed, until he was outside the garrison, and then hid him in a barn, half a mile from our place of shelter. The negroes fed him during the day; and now here he was, jovial, sanguine, daring, ready to start for the North Pole itself.

[Sidenote: COMMENCING THE LONG JOURNEY.]

Welborn gave us written directions how to reach friends in a stanch Union settlement fifty miles away. It was hard to part from the noble fellow. At that very moment he was under arrest, and awaiting trial by court martial, on the charge of aiding prisoners to escape. In due time he was acquitted. Three months later he reached our lines at Knoxville, with thirty Union prisoners, whom he had conducted from Salisbury.

We said adieu, and went out into the starry silence. Plowing through the mud for three miles, we struck the Western Railroad, and followed it. Beside it were several camps with great fires blazing in front of them. Uncertain whether they were occupied by guards or wood-choppers, we kept on the safe side, and flanked them by wide _détours_ through the almost impenetrable forest.

[Sidenote: TOO WEAK FOR TRAVELING.]

We were very weak. In the garrison we had been burying from twelve to twenty men per day, from pneumonia. I had suffered from it for more than a month, and my cough was peculiarly hollow and stubborn. My lungs were still sore and sensitive, and walking greatly exhausted me. It was difficult, even when supported by the arm of one of my friends, to keep up with the party. At midnight I was compelled to lie, half unconscious, upon the ground, for three-quarters of an hour, before I could go on.

We accomplished twelve miles during the night. At three o'clock in the morning we went into the pine-woods, and rested upon the frozen ground.

III. _Tuesday, December 20._

We supposed our hiding-place very secluded; but daylight revealed that it was in the midst of a settlement. Barking dogs, crowing fowls, and shouting negroes, could be heard from the farms all about us. It was very cold, and we dared not build a fire. None of us were adequately clothed, and "Junius" had not even an overcoat. It was impossible to bring extra garments, which would have excited the attention of the sentinel at the gate.

We could sleep for a few minutes on the pine-leaves; but soon the chilly air, penetrating every fibre, would awaken us. There was a road, only a few yards from our pine-thicket, upon which we saw horsemen and farmers with loads of wood, but no negroes unaccompanied by white men.

[Sidenote: SEVERE MARCH IN THE RAIN.]

Soon after dark it began to rain; but necessity, that inexorable policeman, bade us move on. When we approached a large plantation, leaving us behind, in a fence-corner, Thurston went forward to reconnoiter. He found the negro quarters occupied by a middle-aged man and woman. They were very busy that night, cooking for and serving the young white people, who had a pleasure-party at the master's house, within a stone's throw of the slave-cabin.

But when they learned that there were hungry Yankees in the neighborhood, they immediately prepared and brought out to us an enormous supper of fresh pork and corn-bread. It was now nine o'clock on Tuesday night, and we had eaten nothing since three o'clock Sunday afternoon, save about three ounces of bread and four ounces of meat to the man. We had that to think of which made us forget the gnawings of hunger, though we suffered somewhat from a feeling of faintness. Now, in the barn, with the rain pattering on the roof, we devoured supper in an incredibly brief period, and begged the slave to go back with his basket and bring just as much more.

About midnight the negro found time to pilot us through the dense darkness and pouring rain, back to the railroad, from which we had strayed three miles. The night was bitterly cold, and in half an hour we were as wet as if again shipwrecked in the Mississippi.

For five weary miles we plodded on, with the stinging rain pelting our faces. Then we stopped at a plantation, and found the negroes. They told us it was unsafe to remain, several white men being at home, and no good hiding-place near, but directed us to a neighbor's. There the slaves sent us to a roadside barn, which we reached just before daylight.