Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Army Life in a Black Regiment

[183] everybody's way, fanning herself vehemently, and ejaculating, as her gasping breath would permit, “Oh! Do, Jesus! Oh! Do, Jesus!” when the captain abruptly disarmed her of the fan, and left her continuing her pious exercises.

Thus we glided down the river in the waning light. Once more we encountered a battery, making five in all; I could hear the guns of the assailants, and could not distinguish the explosion of their shells from the answering throb of our own guns. The kind Quartermaster kept bringing me news of what occurred, like Rebecca in Front-de-Boeuf's castle, but discreetly withholding any actual casualties. Then all faded into safety and sleep; and we reached Beaufort in the morning, after thirty-six hours of absence. A kind friend, who acted in South Carolina a nobler part amid tragedies than in any of her early stage triumphs, met us with an ambulance at the wharf, and the prisoners, the wounded, and the dead were duly attended.

The reader will not care for any personal record of convalescence; though, among the general military laudations of whiskey, it is. worth while to say that one life was saved, in the opinion of my surgeons, by an habitual abstinence from it, leaving no food for peritoneal inflammation to feed upon. The able-bodied men who had joined us were sent to aid General Gillmore in the trenches, while their families were established in huts and tents on St. Helena Island. A year after, greatly to the delight of the regiment, in taking possession of a battery which they had helped to capture on James Isle and, they found in their hands the selfsame guns which they had seen thrown overboard from the Governor Milton. They then felt that their account with the