d arrange them. While the men were
engaged at such work, the boys of my age, namely, thirteen, and some
older, waited on officers and carried water for the men at work, and in
general acted as messengers between different points on the island.

ENGAGEMENT ON LONG ISLAND.

Though there was no fighting on Sullivan's Island during my stay there,
Confederate soldiers at times crossed the inlet from Sullivan's to Long
Island, in the night and engaged in skirmishes with Union soldiers, who
had entered the upper end of that island and camped there. Whether
these Confederate scouts were ever successful in routing the Union
forces on the island or not I have never learned, but I know that they
were several times repulsed with considerable loss.

NEGROES ESCAPE.

The way the Confederates came to the knowledge that Union soldiers were
on Long Island was that the group of negroes who preceded us on
Sullivan's Island had found out that Union soldiers were camping on the
upper end of Long Island. So one night quite a number of them escaped by
swimming across the inlet that divides Sullivan's Island and Long
Island, and succeeded in reaching the Union line.

The next day it was discovered that they had swam across the inlet, and
the following night they were pursued by a number of Confederate scouts
who crossed in a flat boat. Instead of the capture of the negroes, who
would have been victims of the most cruel death, the Confederate scouts
were met by soldiers from the Union line, and after a hot engagement
they were repulsed, as they usually were.

BUILDING A BATTERY ON LONG ISLAND.

Finally the Confederates took a large number of the group of which I was
a member from Sullivan's to the south shore of Long Island and there
built a battery, and mounted several small field guns upon it. As they
were afraid of being discovered in the daytime we were obliged to work
on the battery nights and were taken back to Sullivan's in the morning,
until the work was completed.

We were guarded by Confederate soldiers while building the battery, as,
without a guard it would have been easy for any of us to have reached
the Union line on the north end of Long Island. Sullivan's Island was
about five miles long.

A NEGRO SERVANT MURDERED.

One of the most heartless deeds committed while I was on Sullivan's
Island, was that of the murder of a negro boy by his master, a
Confederate officer to whom the boy had been a body servant. What