Shortly after Wirz rose and ordered a guard to take me away and keep me, until he decided what to do with me.  The day was intensely hot, and soon the soap in my pockets and on the back of my shirt began burning like double strength Spanish fly blisters.  There was nothing to do but grin and bear it.  I set my teeth, squatted down under the shade of the parapet of the fort, and stood it silently and sullenly.  For the first time in my life I thoroughly appreciated the story of the Spartan boy, who stole the fox and suffered the animal to tear his bowels out rather than give a sign which would lead to the exposure of his theft.

Between four and five o’clock-after I had endured the thing for five or six hours, a guard came with orders from Wirz that I should be returned to the Stockade.  Upon hastily removing my clothes, after coming inside, I found I had a blister on each thigh, and one down my back, that would have delighted an old practitioner of the heroic school.  But I also had a half gallon of excellent soft soap.  My chums and I took a magnificent wash, and gave our clothes the same, and we still had soap enough left to barter for some onions that we had long coveted, and which tasted as sweet to us as manna to the Israelites.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

“Pour Passer Le TEMPS”—­A set of chessmen procured under difficulties —­religious services—­the devoted priest—­war song.

The time moved with leaden feet.  Do the best we could, there were very many tiresome hours for which no occupation whatever could be found.  All that was necessary to be done during the day—­attending roll call, drawing and cooking rations, killing lice and washing—­could be disposed of in an hour’s time, and we were left with fifteen or sixteen waking hours, for which there was absolutely no employment.  Very many tried to escape both the heat and ennui by sleeping as much as possible through the day, but I noticed that those who did this soon died, and consequently I did not do it.  Card playing had sufficed to pass away the hours at first, but our cards soon wore out, and deprived us of this resource.  My chum, Andrews, and I constructed a set of chessmen with an infinite deal of trouble.  We found a soft, white root in the swamp which answered our purpose.  A boy near us had a tolerably sharp pocket-knife, for the use of which a couple of hours each day, we gave a few spoonfuls of meal.  The knife was the only one among a large number of prisoners, as the Rebel guards had an affection for that style of cutlery, which led them to search incoming prisoners, very closely.  The fortunate owner of this derived quite a little income of meal by shrewdly loaning it to his knifeless comrades.  The shapes that we made for pieces and pawns were necessarily very rude, but they were sufficiently distinct for identification.  We blackened one set with pitch pine soot, found a piece of plank that would answer for a board and purchased it from its possessor for part of a ration of meal, and so were fitted out with what served until our release to distract our attention from much of the surrounding misery.