hing Savannah in small squads. The other poor
fellows, who had already been loaded on the trains, were taken away to
Florida, and many of them never lived to return. On the 24th those of us
who had been paroled were taken on board our ships, and were once more
safely housed under that great, glorious and beautiful Star Spangled
Banner. Long may she wave.

CHAPTER LXIII.

DREARY WEATHER--THE COLD RAINS DISTRESS ALL AND KILL HUNDREDS--EXCHANGE
OF TEN THOUSAND SICK--CAPTAIN BOWES TURNS A PRETTY, BUT NOT VERY HONEST,
PENNY.

As November wore away long-continued, chill, searching rains desolated
our days and nights. The great, cold drops pelted down slowly,
dismally, and incessantly. Each seemed to beat through our emaciated
frames against the very marrow of our bones, and to be battering its way
remorselessly into the citadel of life, like the cruel drops that fell
from the basin of the inquisitors upon the firmly-fastened head of their
victim, until his reason fled, and the death-agony cramped his heart to
stillness.

The lagging, leaden hours were inexpressibly dreary. Compared with many
others, we were quite comfortable, as our hut protected us from the
actual beating of the rain upon our bodies; but we were much more
miserable than under the sweltering heat of Andersonville, as we lay
almost naked upon our bed of pine leaves, shivering in the raw, rasping
air, and looked out over acres of wretches lying dumbly on the sodden
sand, receiving the benumbing drench of the sullen skies without a groan
or a motion.

It was enough to kill healthy, vigorous men, active and resolute, with
bodies well-nourished and well clothed, and with minds vivacious and
hopeful, to stand these day-and-night-long solid drenchings. No one can
imagine how fatal it was to boys whose vitality was sapped by long months
in Andersonville, by coarse, meager, changeless food, by groveling on the
bare earth, and by hopelessness as to any improvement of condition.

Fever, rheumatism, throat and lung diseases and despair now came to
complete the work begun by scurvy, dysentery and gangrene, in
Andersonville.

Hundreds, weary of the long struggle, and of hoping against hope, laid
themselves down and yielded to their fate. In the six weeks that we were
at Millen, one man in every ten died. The ghostly pines there sigh over
the unnoted graves of seven hundred boys, for whom life's morning closed
in the gloomiest shadows. As many as wo