Early one morning I overheard a conversation between two of these youthful guards: 

“Say, Bill, I heerd that you shot a Yank last night?”

“Now, you just bet I did.  God! you jest ought to’ve heerd him holler.”

Evidently the juvenile murderer had no more conception that he had committed crime than if he had killed a rattlesnake.

Among those who came in about the last of the month were two thousand men from Butler’s command, lost in the disastrous action of May 15, by which Butler was “bottled up” at Bermuda Hundreds.  At that time the Rebel hatred for Butler verged on insanity, and they vented this upon these men who were so luckless—­in every sense—­as to be in his command.  Every pains was taken to mistreat them.  Stripped of every article of clothing, equipment, and cooking utensils—­everything, except a shirt and a pair of pantaloons, they were turned bareheaded and barefooted into the prison, and the worst possible place in the pen hunted out to locate them upon.  This was under the bank, at the edge of the Swamp and at the eastern side of the prison, where the sinks were, and all filth from the upper part of the camp flowed down to them.  The sand upon which they lay was dry and burning as that of a tropical desert; they were without the slightest shelter of any kind, the maggot flies swarmed over them, and the stench was frightful.  If one of them survived the germ theory of disease is a hallucination.

The increasing number of prisoners made it necessary for the Rebels to improve their means of guarding and holding us in check.  They threw up a line of rifle pits around the Stockade for the infantry guards.  At intervals along this were piles of hand grenades, which could be used with fearful effect in case of an outbreak.  A strong star fort was thrown up at a little distance from the southwest corner.  Eleven field pieces were mounted in this in such a way as to rake the Stockade diagonally.  A smaller fort, mounting five guns, was built at the northwest corner, and at the northeast and southeast corners were small lunettes, with a couple of howitzers each.  Packed as we were we had reason to dread a single round from any of these works, which could not fail to produce fearful havoc.

Still a plot was concocted for a break, and it seemed to the sanguine portions of us that it must prove successful.  First a secret society was organized, bound by the most stringent oaths that could be devised.  The members of this were divided into companies of fifty men each; under officers regularly elected.  The secrecy was assumed in order to shut out Rebel spies and the traitors from a knowledge of the contemplated outbreak.  A man named Baker—­belonging, I think, to some New York regiment—­was the grand organizer of the scheme.  We were careful in each of our companies to admit none to membership except such as long acquaintance gave us entire confidence in.