The devoted four were brought out—­one by one—­and their hands tied together behind their backs.  Then a noose of a slender, strong hemp rope was slipped over the first one’s thumbs and drawn tight, after which the rope was thrown over a log projecting from the roof of the guard house, and two or three Rebels hauled upon it until the miserable Yankee was lifted from the ground, and hung suspended by the thumbs, while his weight seemed tearing his limbs from his shoulder blades.  The other three were treated in the same manner.

The agony was simply excruciating.  The boys were brave, and had resolved to stand their punishment without a groan, but this was too much for human endurance.  Their will was strong, but Nature could not be denied, and they shrieked aloud so pitifully that a young Reserve standing near fainted.  Each one screamed: 

“For God’s sake, kill me! kill me!  Shoot me if—­you want to, but let me down from here!” The only effect of this upon Barrett was to light up his brutal face with a leer of fiendish satisfaction.  He said to the guards with a gleeful wink: 

“By God, I’ll learn these Yanks to be more afeard of me than of the old devil himself.  They’ll soon understand that I’m not the man to fool with.  I’m old pizen, I am, when I git started.  Jest hear ’em squeal, won’t yer?”

Then walking from one prisoner to another, he said: 

“D—–­n yer skins, ye’ll dig tunnels, will ye?  Ye’ll try to git out, and run through the country stealin’ and carryin’ off niggers, and makin’ more trouble than yer d——­d necks are worth.  I’ll learn ye all about that.  If I ketch ye at this sort of work again, d——­d ef I don’t kill ye ez soon ez I ketch ye.”

And so on, ad infinitum.  How long the boys were kept up there undergoing this torture can not be said.  Perhaps it was an hour or more.  To the locker-on it seemed long hours, to the poor fellows themselves it was ages.  When they were let down at last, all fainted, and were carried away to the hospital, where they were weeks in recovering from the effects.  Some of them were crippled for life.

When we came into the prison there were about eleven thousand there.  More uniformly wretched creatures I had never before seen.  Up to the time of our departure from Andersonville the constant influx of new prisoners had prevented the misery and wasting away of life from becoming fully realized.  Though thousands were continually dying, thousands more of healthy, clean, well-clothed men were as continually coming in from the front, so that a large portion of those inside looked in fairly good condition.  Put now no new prisoners had come in for months; the money which made such a show about the sutler shops of Andersonville had been spent; and there was in every face the same look of ghastly emaciation, the same shrunken muscles and feeble limbs, the same lack-luster eyes and hopeless countenances.