Chapter 18 - Page 2

line, fell in single rank, according to this arrangement, and marched
to the place. The line was thrown skillfully, the stick caught fairly in
the notch, and the boy who had drawn number one climbed up amid a
suspense so keen that I could hear my heart beating. It seemed ages
before he reached the top, and that the noise he made must certainly
attract the attention of the guard. It did not. We saw our comrade's.
figure outlined against the sky as he slid, over the top, and then heard
the dull thump as he sprang to the ground on the other side. "Number
two," was whispered by our leader, and he performed the feat as
successfully as his predecessor. "Number, three," and he followed
noiselessly and quickly. Thus it went on, until, just as we heard number
fifteen drop, we also heard a Rebel voice say in a vicious undertone:

"Halt! halt, there, d--n you!"

This was enough. The game was up; we were discovered, and the remaining
thirty-five of us left that locality with all the speed in our heels,
getting away just in time to escape a volley which a squad of guards,
posted in the lookouts, poured upon the spot where we had been standing.

The next morning the fifteen who had got over the Stockade were brought
in, each chained to a sixty-four pound ball. Their story was that one of
the N'Yaarkers, who had become cognizant of our scheme, had sought to
obtain favor in the Rebel eyes by betraying us. The Rebels stationed a
squad at the crossing place, and as each man dropped down from the
Stockade he was caught by the shoulder, the muzzle of a revolver thrust
into his face, and an order to surrender whispered into his ear. It was
expected that the guards in the sentry-boxes would do such execution
among those of us still inside as would prove a warning to other would-be
escapes. They were defeated in this benevolent intention by the
readiness with which we divined the meaning of that incautiously loud
halt, and our alacrity in leaving the unhealthy locality.

The traitorous N'Yaarker was rewarded with a detail into the commissary
department, where he fed and fattened like a rat that had secured
undisturbed homestead rights in the center of a cheese. When the
miserable remnant of us were leaving Andersonville months afterward, I
saw him, sleek, rotund, and well-clothed, lounging leisurely in the door
of a tent. He regarded us a moment contemptuously, and then went on
conversing with a fellow N'Yaarker, in the foul slang that none but such
as he were low enough to use.

I have always imagined that the fellow returned home, at the close of the
war, and became a prominent member of Tweed's gang.

We protested against the barbarity of compelling men to wear irons for