In that camp the whole command slept on the corn in the big corn-crib; and there was usually a general row before morning, for the place was full of rats, and they would scramble over the boys’ bodies and faces, annoying and irritating everybody; and now and then they would bite some one’s toe, and the person who owned the toe would start up and magnify his English and begin to throw corn in the dark.  The ears were half as heavy as bricks, and when they struck they hurt.  The persons struck would respond, and inside of five minutes every man would be locked in a death-grip with his neighbour.  There was a grievous deal of blood shed in the corn-crib, but this was all that was spilt while I was in the war.  No, that is not quite true.  But for one circumstance it would have been all.  I will come to that now.

Our scares were frequent.  Every few days rumours would come that the enemy were approaching.  In these cases we always fell back on some other camp of ours; we never stayed where we were.  But the rumours always turned out to be false; so at last even we began to grow indifferent to them.  One night a negro was sent to our corn-crib with the same old warning:  the enemy was hovering in our neighbourhood.  We all said let him hover.  We resolved to stay still and be comfortable.  It was a fine warlike resolution, and no doubt we all felt the stir of it in our veins —­for a moment.  We had been having a very jolly time, that was full of horse-play and school-boy hilarity; but that cooled down now, and presently the fast-waning fire of forced jokes and forced laughs died out altogether, and the company became silent.  Silent and nervous.  And soon uneasy—­worried—­apprehensive.  We had said we would stay, and we were committed.  We could have been persuaded to go, but there was nobody brave enough to suggest it.  An almost noiseless movement presently began in the dark, by a general and unvoiced impulse.  When the movement was completed, each man knew that he was not the only person who had crept to the front wall and had his eye at a crack between the logs.  No, we were all there; all there with our hearts in our throats, and staring out toward the sugar-troughs where the forest foot-path came through.  It was late, and there was a deep woodsy stillness everywhere.  There was a veiled moonlight, which was only just strong enough to enable us to mark the general shape of objects.  Presently a muffled sound caught our ears, and we recognised it as the hoof-beats of a horse or horses.  And right away a figure appeared in the forest path; it could have been made of smoke, its mass had so little sharpness of outline.  It was a man on horseback; and it seemed to me that there were others behind him.  I got hold of a gun in the dark, and pushed it through a crack between the logs, hardly knowing what I was doing, I was so dazed with fright.  Somebody said ‘Fire!’ I pulled the trigger.  I seemed to see a hundred