But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as with us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as an intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their swift progress to the shadowy hereafter.  The cruel rains had sapped away their stamina, and they could not recover it with the meager and innutritious diet of coarse meal, and an occasional scrap of salt meat.  Quick consumption, bronchitis, pneumonia, low fever and diarrhea seized upon these ready victims for their ravages, and bore them off at the rate of nearly a score a day.

It now became a part of, the day’s regular routine to take a walk past the gates in the morning, inspect and count the dead, and see if any friends were among them.  Clothes having by this time become a very important consideration with the prisoners, it was the custom of the mess in which a man died to remove from his person all garments that were of any account, and so many bodies were carried out nearly naked.  The hands were crossed upon the breast, the big toes tied together with a bit of string, and a slip of paper containing the man’s name, rank, company and regiment was pinned on the breast of his shirt.

The appearance of the dead was indescribably ghastly.  The unclosed eyes shone with a stony glitter—­

               An orphan’s curse would drag to hell
               A spirit from on high: 
               But, O, more terrible than that,
               Is the curse in a dead man’s eye.

The lips and nostrils were distorted with pain and hunger, the sallow, dirt-grimed skin drawn tensely over the facial bones, and the whole framed with the long, lank, matted hair and beard.  Millions of lice swarmed over the wasted limbs and ridged ribs.  These verminous pests had become so numerous—­owing to our lack of changes of clothing, and of facilities for boiling what we had—­that the most a healthy man could do was to keep the number feeding upon his person down to a reasonable limit—­say a few tablespoonfuls.  When a man became so sick as to be unable to help himself, the parasites speedily increased into millions, or, to speak more comprehensively, into pints and quarts.  It did not even seem exaggeration when some one declared that he had seen a dead man with more than a gallon of lice on him.

There is no doubt that the irritation from the biting of these myriads materially the days of those who died.

Where a sick man had friends or comrades, of course part of their duty, in taking care of him, was to “louse” his clothing.  One of the most effectual ways of doing this was to turn the garments wrong side out and hold the seams as close to the fire as possible, without burning the cloth.  In a short time the lice would swell up and burst open, like pop-corn.  This method was a favorite one for another reason than its efficacy:  it gave one a keener sense of revenge upon his rascally little tormentors than he could get in any other way.