The Daily Dispatch: August 7, 1862., [Electronic resource]

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Col. Zarvona.

This gallant officer, so well known for his daring feat in accomplishing the capture of the steamer St. Nicholas and other vessels on the Potomac, still languishes in one of the gloomy cells of Fort Lafayette. Some of our men who have been permitted to return home by the Yankees, say that for five months past his treatment has been most rigorous and inhuman — he being confined in a close, damp cell, the window of which was boarded up to exclude the light. Notwithstanding these precautions, though communication with him by the other prisoners was strictly forbidden, they contrived, by tying notes to nails and throwing them in the window, to hear from him; but the fact be coming known to the Yankee commandant of the prison, he marched Zarvona to the guard-house, dressed one of his own Sergeants in the Colonel's habiliments, and placed him at the window to receive the notes intended for him. Not knowing this, several of our men were detected and put in irons. When Col. Zarvona was captured, he was a commissioned Colonel in a Virginia regiment, and is, therefore, though he was not captured in battle, but by a ruse, entitled to all the privileges accorded to any other prisoner of war.