t only submitting to, but returning
the embrace.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIXTH.

"And faint not, heart of man! though years wane slow!
There have been those that from the deepest caves,
And cells of night and fastnesses below
The stormy dashing of the ocean waves,
Down, farther down than gold lies hid, have nurs'd
A quenchless hope, and watch'd their time and burst
On the bright day like wakeners from the grave."
--MRS. HEMANS

Noon of a sultry July day, 1864; the scorching sun looks down upon a pine
forest; in its midst a cleared space some thirty acres in extent,
surrounded by a log stockade ten feet high, the timbers set three feet
deep into the ground; a star fort, with one gun at each corner of the
square enclosure; on top of the stockade sentinel boxes placed twenty feet
apart, reached by steps from the outside; in each of these a vigilant
guard with loaded musket, constantly on the watch for the slightest
pretext for shooting down some one or more of the prisoners, of whom there
are from twenty-five thousand to thirty thousand.

All along the inner side of the wall, six feet from it, stretches a dead
line; and any poor fellow thoughtlessly or accidentally laying a hand upon
it, or allowing any part of his body to reach under or over it, will be
instantly shot.

A green, slimy, sluggish stream, bringing with it all the filth of the
sewers of Andersonville, a village three miles distant, flows directly
across the enclosure from east to west. Formerly, the only water fit to
drink came from a spring beyond the eastern wall, which flowing under it,
into the enclosure, emptied itself into the other stream, a few feet
within the dead line.

It did not suffice to satisfy the thirst of the thousands who must drink
or die, and the little corner where its waters could be reached was always
crowded, men pressing upon each other till often one or another would be
pushed against the dead line, shot by the guard, and the body left lying
till the next morning; even if it had fallen into the water beyond the
line, polluting the scant supply left for the living. But the cry of these
perishing ones had gone up into the ears of the merciful Father of us all,
and of late a spring of clear water bubbles up in their midst.

But powder and shot, famine, exposure (for the prisoners have no shelter,
except as they burrow in the earth), and malaria from that s