L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

“ Sogers uv the Fust Tennessee! Mount!”

The regiment bounded into the saddle, and in that plight — the planter and the eight captive officers marching on before, the self-appointed “cunnel” and his chief officer bringing up the rear, and the rest of his commandthe yellow woman-a-straddle of a horse between them, they entered the Union lines.

On another occasion, hunted down by several companies of rebel cavalry, Bible took refuge in a grove of laurel bushes. Among the bushes was a hollow tree in which he had once or twice slept on previous expeditions. It had been overthrown by a tornado, and the soil still clung, in huge boulders, to its upturned roots. Creeping into this tree, he closed the small opening with earth, and boring a hole through the trunk with his Bowie-knife to admit air, and give him a look-out on his pursuers, he lay there without food for three days and nights. The rebels saw him enter the grove, and at once surrounded it, so that escape was impossible. A party then beat the bushes, and after examining every square yard of the ground, came and sat upon the hollow tree. Listening, he heard them recount some of his exploits, and assert very positively, that he had sold himself to that notorious dealer in human chattels --the devil-who, they thought, had given him power to make himself invisible at will. “Ana beina thet's so, cumrades,” very logically remarked one of the number, “doan't it nat'rally foiler thet the devil ara on the Union ”