move on, and make a
night march; but as time passed, the men made down their beds, and
addressed themselves to sleep. About ten or eleven o'clock,
orders--perhaps delayed--were received for the men to camp for the
night, the march to be resumed at two in the morning. It at once entered
into the fertile brain of Lieutenant Peacock to extract a little fun
from the circumstances. Going to a group of men sleeping soundly under
their blankets, he deliberately roused them up and informed them that
they could sleep till two o'clock.

"Well, what the ---- did you wake us up for, to tell us that?"

"Why, you ---- lunatic, aren't two sleeps better than one?"

Then would follow a volley of protestations and modified blessings from
one side and the other.

At two in the morning we were again on the march. We passed Sussex Court
House and a place called Corman's Well. In the evening we reached the
North Cross House, on the Halifax road, thirty miles from Petersburg.
Here we struck the Welden Railroad, and the work of destruction began.
It was an exciting scene as the work progressed. There was an abundance
of ties along the road, and of these fires were built beside the track.
As far as the eye could reach the track was a line of blazing fires and
busy, shouting men. A brigade would stack arms on the bank beside the
track; then, taking hold of the rails, would begin to lift and surge on
it altogether, shouting in unison:

"Ohe!"

"Ohe!"

"Set her _up_!"

"Ohe!"

Soon it would begin to give, and quickly would be hurled over from the
road-bed with a ripping, crashing sound, followed by the shouts and
cheers of the men. Then came the process of detaching the part thus
overturned from that still undisturbed, if this had not been previously
accomplished. Using a length of rail as a lever, this was quickly done,
and in a surprisingly brief space of time the rails of a half-mile of
road would be lying on blazing piles of ties. As a general rule, the
rails were laid on the fire, and the heating of the middle portion would
cause them to bend by their own weight, thus rendering them useless.
When there was time, the men twisted the hot rails around trees or
telegraph poles, or wreathed them together in fantastic shapes. We
worked nearly all night. Toward morning we halted in a field, and slept
for a couple of hours. Early in the morning the work was resumed, and
continued till evening, with only brief intermission for dinner. It