CHAPTER XXXIV.

Maggots, lice and raiders—­practices of these human vermin—­plundering the sick and dying—­night attacks, and battles by day—­hard times for the small traders.

With each long, hot Summer hour the lice, the maggot-flies and the N’Yaarkers increased in numbers and venomous activity.  They were ever-present annoyances and troubles; no time was free from them.  The lice worried us by day and tormented us by night; the maggot-flies fouled our food, and laid in sores and wounds larvae that speedily became masses of wriggling worms.  The N’Yaarkers were human vermin that preyed upon and harried us unceasingly.

They formed themselves into bands numbering from five to twenty-five, each led by a bold, unscrupulous, energetic scoundrel.  We now called them “Raiders,” and the most prominent and best known of the bands were called by the names of their ruffian leaders, as “Mosby’s Raiders,” “Curtis’s Raiders,” “Delaney’s Raiders,” “Sarsfield’s Raiders,” “Collins’s Raiders,” etc.

As long as we old prisoners formed the bulk of those inside the Stockade, the Raiders had slender picking.  They would occasionally snatch a blanket from the tent poles, or knock a boy down at the Creek and take his silver watch from him; but this was all.  Abundant opportunities for securing richer swag came to them with the advent of the Plymouth Pilgrims.  As had been before stated, these boys brought in with them a large portion of their first instalment of veteran bounty—­aggregating in amount, according to varying estimates, between twenty-five thousand and one hundred thousand dollars.  The Pilgrims were likewise well clothed, had an abundance of blankets and camp equipage, and a plentiful supply of personal trinkets, that could be readily traded off to the Rebels.  An average one of them—­even if his money were all gone—­was a bonanza to any band which could succeed in plundering him.  His watch and chain, shoes, knife, ring, handkerchief, combs and similar trifles, would net several hundred dollars in Confederate money.  The blockade, which cut off the Rebel communication with the outer world, made these in great demand.  Many of the prisoners that came in from the Army of the Potomac repaid robbing equally well.  As a rule those from that Army were not searched so closely as those from the West, and not unfrequently they came in with all their belongings untouched, where Sherman’s men, arriving the same day, would be stripped nearly to the buff.