Chapter 79

GETTING USED TO FREEDOM--DELIGHTS OF A LAND WHERE THERE IS ENOUGH OF
EVERYTHING--FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE OLD FLAG--WILMINGTON AND ITS HISTORY
--LIEUTENANT CUSHING--FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE COLORED TROOPS--LEAVING
FOR HOME--DESTRUCTION OF THE "THORN" BY A TORPEDO--THE MOCK MONITOR'S
ACHIEVEMENT.

After a sound sleep, Andrews and I awoke to the enjoyment of our first
day of freedom and existence in God's country. The sun had already
risen, bright and warm, consonant with the happiness of the new life now
opening up for us.

But to nearly a score of our party his beams brought no awakening
gladness. They fell upon stony, staring eyes, from out of which the
light of life had now faded, as the light of hope had done long ago.
The dead lay there upon the rude beds of fallen leaves, scraped together
by thoughtful comrades the night before, their clenched teeth showing
through parted lips, faces fleshless and pinched, long, unkempt and
ragged hair and whiskers just stirred by the lazy breeze, the rotting
feet and limbs drawn up, and skinny hands clenched in the last agonies.

Their fate seemed harder than that of any who had died before them.
It was doubtful if many of them knew that they were at last inside of our
own lines.

Again the kind-hearted boys of the brigade crowded around us with
proffers of service. Of an Ohio boy who directed his kind tenders to
Andrews and me, we procured a chunk of coarse rosin soap about as big as
a pack of cards, and a towel. Never was there as great a quantity of
solid comfort got out of that much soap as we obtained. It was the first
that we had since that which I stole in Wirz's headquarters, in June
--nine months before. We felt that the dirt which had accumulated upon
us since then would subject us to assessment as real estate if we were
in the North.

Hurrying off to a little creek we began our ablutions, and it was not
long until Andrews declared that there was a perceptible sand-bar forming
in the stream, from what we washed off. Dirt deposits of the Pliocene
era rolled off feet and legs. Eocene incrustations let loose reluctantly
from neck and ears; the hair was a mass of tangled locks matted with nine
months' accumulation of pitch pine tar, rosin soot, and South Carolina
sand, that we did not think we had better start in upon it until we
either had the shock cut off, or had a whole ocean and a vat of soap to
wash it out with.

After scrubbing until we were exhausted we got off the first few outer
layers--the post tertiary formation, a geologist would term it--and the
smell of many breakfasts cooking, coming down over the hill, set our
stomachs in a mutiny against any longer fasting.

We went back, rosy, panting, glowing, but