hard road-bed, the rattle of cavalry equipments.  A force of horsemen was evidently approaching.  Were they Union or Confederate?  Was freedom or renewed captivity before them?  They looked quickly to right and left.  No opportunity for concealment appeared.  Nor was there a moment’s time for flight, for the sound of hoof-beats was immediately followed by the appearance of mounted and uniformed men, a cavalry squad, still some hundreds of yards away, but riding towards them at full gallop.

The eyes of the fugitives looked wistfully and anxiously towards them.  Thank Heaven! they wore the Union blue!  Those guidons which rose high in the air bore the Union colors!  They were United States cavalry!  Safety was assured!

In a minute more the rattling hoofs were close at hand, the band of rescuers were around them; eager questions, glad answers, heartfelt congratulations filled the air.  In a very few minutes the fugitives were mounted and riding gladly back in the midst of their new friends, to be banqueted, feasted, and f[^e]ted, until every vestige of their hardships had been worn away by human kindness.

As to their feelings at this happy termination of their heroic struggle for freedom, words cannot express them.  The weary days, the bitter disappointments, the harsh treatment of prison life; the days and nights of cold, hunger, and peril, wanderings through swamps and thorny thickets, hopes and despairs of flight; all were at an end, and now only friends surrounded them, only congratulating and commiserating voices met their ears.  It was a feast of joy never to be forgotten.

A few words will finish.  One hundred and nine men had escaped.  Of these, fifty-five reached the Union lines.  Fifty-four were captured and taken back to prison.  Some of the escaped officers, more swift in motion or fortunate in route than the others, reached the Union lines on their third day from Richmond.  Their report that others were on the road bore good fruit.  General Butler, then in command at Fortress Monroe, sent out, on alternate days, the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry and the First New York Rifles to patrol the country in search of the escaping prisoners, with tall guidons to attract their attention if they should be in concealment.  Many of the fugitives were thus rescued.  The adventures of two, as above given, must serve for example of them all.

THE SINKING OF THE ALBEMARLE.

Naval operations in the American Civil War were particularly distinguished by the active building of iron-clads.  The North built and employed them with marked success; the South, with marked failure.  With praiseworthy energy and at great cost the Confederates produced iron-clad vessels of war in Norfolk Harbor, on Roanoke River, in the Mississippi, and elsewhere, yet, with the exception of the one day’s raid of ruin of the Merrimac in Hampton Roads, their labor was almost in vain, their expensive war-vessels went down in the engulfing waters or went up in flame and smoke.  Their efforts in this direction were simply conspicuous examples of non-success.  We propose here to tell the tale of disaster of the Albemarle, one of these iron-clads, and the great deed of heroism which brought her career to an untimely end.