Part 20 (2/2)
”I encouraged him, telling him the worst was over and we would soon reach the river. I suppose we had shaped our course a little too far south, and thus made the distance longer than it would otherwise have been. We struggled on for some time, crawling where the ground was stony, and stopping very often to temporarily quell the pain in our feet. I was a little ahead, and, as the breeze fanned my aching temples, I thought I heard to our right the lull of running water. I told Mark and cheered him up. We forgot our tortures for the time being and scrambled on quite lively, and soon after had the satisfaction of standing on the banks of the Chattahoochee.
”De Soto did not feel more joy when he first discovered the Mississippi, the great Father of Waters, nor was the ecstasy of Balboa greater, when, from the cloud-capped summits of Darien, his eyes first beheld the vast expanse of water which he named the Pacific Ocean. Like that great discoverer, we waded out into the water, carrying neither naked sword nor the banner of our country like he, to take possession of our discovery in the name of our rulers, but to bathe our painful feet and cool our parched throats.
”We made certain of the direction the river current ran, and started southward in high hopes, although the temptation to go northward to our friends was very strong. We now wanted a boat, and, not long after we started, fortune had another pleasant surprise in store for us, for we came upon a skiff safely moored, with lock and chain, to a tree. After carefully inspecting the surroundings to see that no prying eyes were peering on us, we 'loosened' the lock with a stone, and in a few minutes after were smoothly gliding down the current of the great river, and I doubt if two more joyful mortals ever navigated a canoe than we two, with that stolen little craft.
”What a happy change! Our weary limbs and painful feet now had a rest, and yet we were gliding noiselessly on our journey.
What wonderful teachers hards.h.i.+p and stern necessity are!
Discontented mortals do not half appreciate the blessings they have until they have been pupils in the school of adversity. I felt as if this chilly night's ride, in a little stolen boat, on a strange river, whose sh.o.r.es were hidden by Plutonian shadows, was the best and most grateful that I ever had, or ever expected to enjoy.
”We pulled off our old boots and bathed our lacerated feet in the water, and quenched the tormenting thirst caused by the indigestible hard corn, which was now our only nourishment. We kept our paddles pretty busy, as we wished to get as far away as possible from where we took the boat before the dawn of day.
When daylight began to appear, we paddled our craft into a bayou, safe from view, and secreted ourselves in a thicket for the day.
”Four days and nights had now pa.s.sed since we had eaten food, except the morsel of corn-bread we brought out of the prison.
We lay down to sleep the day away, but between our great hunger and the swarms of mosquitoes we could get but little rest. I could, while sleeping, see in my dreams tables spread and groaning with loads of good things to eat; bread, meat, cheese, coffee, biscuit, and b.u.t.ter were all within my reach, and were vanis.h.i.+ng before my ravenous appet.i.te, when, in the midst of the great pleasures of this feast, I would suddenly waken to a sense of the reality of the case, and what a maddening disappointment I would feel. With this disturbed sort of rest we worried through the day, the demands of hunger and our stomachs getting the better of nature's demand for rest, until at last we grew desperate, and at early twilight, in the evening, pulled out of the little bayou, determined on a raid of some sort on a house for food.
”We spied a house some distance from the river-bank, which we thought from appearances we could capture with a plausible story or by force.
”On approaching, we saw in its immediate vicinity quite a number of negro cabins, and in the yard surrounding the house about twenty blood-hounds chained to the fence, indicating that these were the premises of an extensive planter. The only occupants of the house were an old man and woman. We apologized for disturbing them, and told them we were soldiers who had been on furlough returning to our regiments at Atlanta, and wished directions to the ferry (we had discovered a ferry as we came down); also, that we were hungry and wanted to get something to eat, provided they felt like feeding hungry soldiers without money, as we had had no pay for some time, and were both moneyless and in bad health, Mark's appearance proving this latter a.s.sertion. It was quite dark, however, and they could not see us very distinctly, but they evidently credited our story, for they told us to be seated and we would soon be made welcome to such food as they had.
”They were a couple of quite intelligent but unsophisticated old people, in comfortable circ.u.mstances, living, as most Southerners did, away from any highway, and we gained their confidence so far as to feel ourselves a.s.sured from suspicion.
I had been in Dixie so long that I had acquired, from the guards and citizens, their vernacular of speech quite perfectly; besides this, we had learned the names of officers and the number of different regiments, such as the Eighth Georgia Cavalry, Fifth Tennessee Infantry, etc., until we were able to tell quite a plausible story, if not too closely questioned.
”We asked the old man if there was any late news. He said, 'Nothing, except that the Yankee raiders had seized the Atlanta jailer, overpowered the guards, and a number of them escaped and had not yet been caught.' We expressed great surprise that such a piece of audacity could be made successful in Atlanta.
The old man said, 'They were a desperate, dangerous lot of scoundrels, who ought to have been hung long ago.' He said many of them stood up and fought the soldiers with clubs and bricks, even after the guards had shot them through, and finally they jumped the high fence and ran like deer.
”In the mean time we had devoured everything the good woman had set before us on the table. We were ashamed, but our hunger was so much stronger than our sense of shame that we could not leave off, and, if we had not been in a hurry, we would have waited for her to have prepared another meal for us. She said she regretted that she had not more cooked to set before us, but we told her she had been very kind, and thanked them, at the same time bidding them good-night, when we started off, as they supposed, for the ferry. A short time afterwards we were in our boat pulling down-stream with more vigorous energy than we had before. We kept up a steady stroke of the paddles for some hours, feeling that each stroke placed so much more distance between us and the prison.
”While we were thus moving along with steady, cautious stroke, high in the hopes of the future, I suddenly, quicker than a flash, found myself lying flat on my back in the river. What on earth had happened I did not know, the accident had been so sudden. I thought of earthquakes, whales, sharks, torpedoes, and many other things. Luckily, one of my feet caught on the side of the boat, and I drifted with it until Mark came to my a.s.sistance and pulled me out. The cause of my mishap had been a ferry-boat wire, which was stretched across the river, and hung just low enough to catch me fairly as I sat in the stern of the boat. It struck Mark, but he sat in the middle, and fell into the bottom of the boat. We were going at a good speed, and the collision came so suddenly that it is a wonder we did not fare worse. Fortunately, there were no guards at the ferry, so we had no cause to apprehend discovery or molestation. My greatest mishap was a thorough wetting, for the night was frosty and cold, and caused me to chill.
”This was followed in the after part of the night by a stupor that I could not shake off, and my continued efforts at the paddle had wellnigh exhausted me. Mark could not manage the boat very well, as he had tried it a number of times. But I felt that I must have rest and sleep, and so gave the boat over into his hands, enjoining him to keep it in the current. I lay down in the bottom of the boat, and soon sank into a state of forgetfulness and sleep. I do not know how long I had slept, but some time in the night Mark aroused me, and told me we could go no farther, as we had come 'to the end of the river.'
It was some time before he could awaken me fully to consciousness, so that I could comprehend our situation.
”At last I began to look around, to determine what Mark's 'end of the river' meant. I soon discovered that he had run the boat away under a ledge of the mountain, and a dim light could only be seen in one direction. All else around us was impenetrable darkness. I took the paddle, and worked the boat in the direction of the light, and in a little while we emerged from beneath this overhanging mountain ledge, and again reached the current of the river, down which the boat was soon rapidly gliding. Mark now discovered that the 'end of the river' had not yet been reached, but he did not care to take charge of the boat again.
”Shortly after this adventure we perceived that we were not to have smooth sailing all the way. The river began to grow rough, and the water ran over benches and ledges of rocks, and, in places, with great velocity, so much so that we narrowly escaped being 'broken up' on several occasions during this night's journey. We pa.s.sed over a number of places that we would not have dared to risk in daylight, when we could have seen the danger. It seemed to grow worse and worse as we went on, when daylight warned us that it was time to tie up and hide, which we did, and, the day being warm and pleasant, we had a comfortable rest,--the best since our escape.
”On the following night we came to a mill-dam, where the water, judging from the noise, poured over in great volume and force.
We manoeuvred around for some time above it, not knowing what to do, but finally discovered what appeared to be an ap.r.o.n near the centre of the dam, and decided to risk running it.
Accordingly, we rowed up-stream some distance to get under good headway, then turning the head of the boat down-stream, we bent to our paddles with all our might. We came down with the velocity of an express-train. What we supposed might have been an ap.r.o.n, was nothing but a break in the dam, and over it we shot like an arrow, shutting our eyes and holding our breath.
In an instant after, we landed (luckily right side up) away below in the midst of the angry, foaming torrent, and plying our paddles right vigorously, and keeping the bow of our boat down-stream, we rode out safely, but then and there 'swore off'
on running mill-dams in the night.
”We continued our journey, though the river was still rough and growing worse. We were constantly among rocks and foaming, headlong torrents of water, while steep rocky walls confined the stream to very narrow limits, and dark, shadowy mountain peaks loomed up in the background, reminding us of the Tennessee about Chattanooga. We went on from bad to worse, until at last, during the latter part of the night, we were incautiously drawn into a gorge, where it seemed that the destruction of our boat was inevitable. Such was the force and velocity of the water, that we lost all control of the boat, and in one instant would be spinning around in a furious eddy until our heads were fairly dizzy, and in the next we would be dashed against the rocks until it seemed as if our boat would be splintered to pieces. We regarded our escape here as the narrowest we had made, and as quick as we could do so with safety we landed on the rocks and, with many regrets, abandoned our little craft to begin a tedious, toilsome land journey of three days and nights over rocky hills, bluffs, and mountains along the river.
”Just as we landed from the boat Mark started to walk out, and, losing his balance, fell headlong into the river. With considerable difficulty I fished him out, and, the early morning being quite cool, the poor fellow was chilled through and through, and it was with the greatest difficulty that I finally succeeded in getting him up into the mountains, and continued to exercise him by walking, so as to get up a good circulation of his blood. But he became so benumbed that I finally let him lie down, and gathered a lot of cedar boughs and piled them thickly over him, and then crawled in with him myself, and kept him as warm as possible. Here we slept and rested until late in the afternoon of that day, which became very warm under the bright rays of the sun.
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