compelled a general reduction of the
space we all occupied. We had to tear down our huts and move. By this
time the materials had become so dry that we could not rebuild with them,
as the pine tufts fell to pieces. This reduced the tent and bedding
material of our party--now numbering five--to a cavalry overcoat and a
blanket. We scooped a hole a foot deep in the sand and stuck our
tent-poles around it. By day we spread our blanket over the poles for a
tent. At night we lay down upon the overcoat and covered ourselves with
the blanket. It required considerable stretching to make it go over
five; the two out side fellows used to get very chilly, and squeeze the
three inside ones until they felt no thicker than a wafer. But it had
to do, and we took turns sleeping on the outside. In the course of a
few weeks three of my chums died and left myself and B. B. Andrews (now
Dr. Andrews, of Astoria, Ill.) sole heirs to and occupants of, the
overcoat and blanket.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE "PLYMOUTH PILGRIMS"--SAD TRANSITION FROM COMFORTABLE BARRACKS TO
ANDERSONVILLE--A CRAZED PENNSYLVANIAN--DEVELOPMENT OF THE BUTLER
BUSINESS.

We awoke one morning, in the last part of April, to find about two
thousand freshly arrived prisoners lying asleep in the main streets
running from the gates. They were attired in stylish new uniforms,
with fancy hats and shoes; the Sergeants and Corporals wore patent
leather or silk chevrons, and each man had a large, well-filled knapsack,
of the kind new recruits usually carried on coming first to the front,
and which the older soldiers spoke of humorously as "bureaus." They were
the snuggest, nattiest lot of soldiers we had ever seen, outside of the
"paper collar" fellows forming the headquarter guard of some General in a
large City. As one of my companions surveyed them, he said:

"Hulloa! I'm blanked if the Johnnies haven't caught a regiment of
Brigadier Generals, somewhere."

By-and-by the "fresh fish," as all new arrivals were termed, began to
wake up, and then we learned that they belonged to a brigade consisting
of the Eighty-Fifth New York, One Hundred and First and One Hundred and
Third Pennsylvania, Sixteenth Connecticut, Twenty-Fourth New York
Battery, two companies of Massachusetts heavy artillery, and a company of
the Twelfth New York Cavalry.

They had been garrisoning Plymouth, N. C., an important seaport on the
Roanoke River. Three small gunboats assisted them in their