“Now, if ever I heard musketry firing in my life, that’s a heavy skirmish line at work, and sharply too, and not more than three miles away, neither.”

Then another would say: 

“I don’t want to ever get out of here if that don’t sound just as the skirmishing at Chancellorsville did the first day to us.  We were lying down about four miles off, when it began pattering just as that is doing now.”

And so on.

One night about nine or ten, there came two short, sharp peals of thunder, that sounded precisely like the reports of rifled field pieces.  We sprang up in a frenzy of excitement, and shouted as if our throats would split.  But the next peal went off in the usual rumble, and our excitement had to subside.

CHAPTER LXXVII.

Fruitless waiting for Sherman—­we leave Florence—­intelligence of the
fall of Wilmington communicated to us by A slave—­the turpentine region
of north Carolina—­we come upon A rebel line of battle—­Yankees at both
ends of the road.

Things had gone on in the way described in the previous chapter until past the middle of February.  For more than a week every waking hour was spent in anxious expectancy of Sherman—­listening for the far-off rattle of his guns—­straining our ears to catch the sullen boom of his artillery—­scanning the distant woods to see the Rebels falling back in hopeless confusion before the pursuit of his dashing advance.  Though we became as impatient as those ancient sentinels who for ten long years stood upon the Grecian hills to catch the first glimpse of the flames of burning Troy, Sherman came not.  We afterwards learned that two expeditions were sent down towards us from Cheraw, but they met with unexpected resistance, and were turned back.

It was now plain to us that the Confederacy was tottering to its fall, and we were only troubled by occasional misgivings that we might in some way be caught and crushed under the toppling ruins.  It did not seem possible that with the cruel tenacity with which the Rebels had clung to us they would be willing to let us go free at last, but would be tempted in the rage of their final defeat to commit some unparalleled atrocity upon us.

One day all of us who were able to walk were made to fall in and march over to the railroad, where we were loaded into boxcars.  The sick —­except those who were manifestly dying—­were loaded into wagons and hauled over.  The dying were left to their fate, without any companions or nurses.

The train started off in a northeasterly direction, and as we went through Florence the skies were crimson with great fires, burning in all directions.  We were told these were cotton and military stores being destroyed in anticipation of a visit from, a part of Sherman’s forces.