eaven. And at night, when lulled to
sleep by the rippling waves, how enchanting his dreams of home, of his
mother, of the scenes of other days,--the old house, the swallows
twittering around its eaves, the roses blooming beneath the window, the
night-wind sweeping down the valley, the church-bell ringing the evening
hour, its deep tolling when the funeral train passed on to the cemetery
in the shady grove,--his friends welcoming him home once more, Azalia
among them, queen of the hour, peerless in beauty, with rose bloom on
her cheek,--of Mr. Chrome, Judge Adams, and Colonel Dare, all saying,
"We are glad to see you,"--dreaming, and waking, to find it only a
dream.

But the ship was bearing him on. The distance was lessening. One more
day, and the voyage would be at an end, the ship in port. O, if he could
but see his mother once more,--feel her hand upon his brow, her kiss
upon his lip,--then he could die content! A desire for life set in. Hope
revived. He would fight death as he had fought the Rebels, and, God
willing, he would win the victory.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE JAWS OF DEATH.

The hospital steamer, with its freight of living skeletons, had
accomplished its voyage in safety, and lay moored at the wharf in
Annapolis. Nurses and sailors were carrying the emaciated forms from the
ship to the shore, to the clean and tidy wards of the hospital.

It was a sight which wrung tears from the eyes of those who did not
often weep. The ship was a charnel-house. Death in its most horrible
forms was there,--from starvation, from corruption, scurvy, lock-jaw,
gangrene, consumption, and fever. How ghastly the scene! Men, once
robust and strong, weak and helpless as babes, with hollow cheeks,
toothless gums, thin pale lips, colorless flesh, sunken eyes, long,
tangled hair, uncombed for many months, skeleton fingers with nails like
eagles' claws, lying in rags upon the deck,--some, with strained eyes,
looking up for the last time to the dear old flag which waved above
them, for which they had fought, for which they had starved, for which
they were dying, gazing in rapture on its blessed folds, till their eyes
were fixed in death, and the slowly-heaving heart stood still forever!
They, and all their comrades, sleeping on a hundred battle-fields, and
mouldering in the trenches at Andersonville, were the victims of
Jefferson Davis and General Lee, whose names shall rot through all
coming time.

There was work for the gen