Fighting Joe by Oliver Optic — Read

IT was not very easy travelling in the swamp, but it had this advantage, that they could not be pursued by cavalry. They had silenced the howl of the dogs, and their pursuers could have no idea of the direction they had taken. The killing of the blood-hounds gave the fugitives all the advantage, and they "doubled" on the hunters by returning to the creek which they had crossed before. After following the stream for about five miles, as there were no signs of a pursuit in this direction, they halted to wait for the protecting shades of night, when they hoped to find some of the negroes, whom recaptured prisoners had uniformly represented as kind and devoted to the last degree.

It would be several hours before the journey could be safely resumed, and our reunited friends had much to say of the past and the future. Each wished to know the history of the other since they had parted. Somers accounted for himself first, and De Banyan then exhibited the scar of an ugly wound in the head, which was the one given him by the guerilla. It had knocked him from his horse; but he had soon recovered his senses, and the villains had conducted him over the creek where he fainted. When he came to himself, his captors had left him; but he was soon picked up by a squad of the regular rebel cavalry, and sent first to the hospital, then to Columbia, where he had been from that time. He had fully recovered from his wound, but his health was much impaired by hard usage and poor food. He had gone to the hospital to die, as he thought; but his vigorous constitution enabled him to survive the medical treatment.