And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the dust of the earth, and it became lice in man and in beast; all the dust of the land became lice throughout all the land of Egypt.

The total number of deaths in April, according to the official report, was five hundred and seventy-six, or an average of over nineteen a day.  There was an average of five thousand prisoner’s in the pen during all but the last few days of the month, when the number was increased by the arrival of the captured garrison of Plymouth.  This would make the loss over eleven per cent., and so worse than decimation.  At that rate we should all have died in about eight months.  We could have gone through a sharp campaign lasting those thirty days and not lost so great a proportion of our forces.  The British had about as many men as were in the Stockade at the battle of New Orleans, yet their loss in killed fell much short of the deaths in the pen in April.

A makeshift of a hospital was established in the northeastern corner of the Stockade.  A portion of the ground was divided from the rest of the prison by a railing, a few tent flies were stretched, and in these the long leaves of the pine were made into apologies for beds of about the goodness of the straw on which a Northern farmer beds his stock.  The sick taken there were no better off than if they had staid with their comrades.

What they needed to bring about their recovery was clean clothing, nutritious food, shelter and freedom from the tortures of the lice.  They obtained none of these.  Save a few decoctions of roots, there were no medicines; the sick were fed the same coarse corn meal that brought about the malignant dysentery from which they all suffered; they wore and slept in the same vermin-infested clothes, and there could be but one result:  the official records show that seventy-six per cent. of those taken to the hospitals died there.

The establishment of the hospital was specially unfortunate for my little squad.  The ground required for it compelled a general reduction of the space we all occupied.  We had to tear down our huts and move.  By this time the materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild with them, as the pine tufts fell to pieces.  This reduced the tent and bedding material of our party—­now numbering five—­to a cavalry overcoat and a blanket.  We scooped a hole a foot deep in the sand and stuck our tent-poles around it.  By day we spread our blanket over the poles for a tent.  At night we lay down upon the overcoat and covered ourselves with the blanket.  It required considerable stretching to make it go over five; the two out side fellows used to get very chilly, and squeeze the three inside ones until they felt no thicker than a wafer.  But it had to do, and we took turns sleeping on the outside.  In the course of a few weeks three of my chums died and left myself and B. B. Andrews (now Dr. Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants of, the overcoat and blanket.