Here I witnessed an occurrence that, according to the law of chances, would not happen once in a thousand times. In the battery was a dry well, about six or eight feet deep, and one afternoon, while our friend the gunboat was throwing the usual shells at us, and we were dodging them, I remarked to a comrade that "that old well would be a good place to get into." The remark had scarcely been made before a shell dropped into that well as accurately as possible. It was simply one of those remarkable occurrences that happen in real life, but which writers dare not put in fiction. The picket line on James Island in this vicinity, together with Battery Haskell, was then under the command of Maj. Edward Manigault, an officer of very exceptional ability. During this summer our shortness of rations began, and continued rather to intensify until the end. For one period of about two months it consisted of only one small loaf of baker's bread and a gill of sorghum syrup daily. For that time we had not a particle of either fresh or salt meat. If we had not been where we could obtain plenty of fish, we would have suffered seriously. The quartermaster's department was as badly crippled as the commissary's and most of us could get no new shoes, and several of our men were actually bare-footed in consequence; but it being summer, and on a sandy coast, there was not as much suffering as might have been otherwise. Scurvy, fever, and other ailments were very general and several deaths resulted. The battery was on a strip of land separated from the main land of James Island by a marsh and small creek, over which was a causeway and bridge. This causeway was watched from the Federal gunboats, and every time even one man would go across it he would be saluted with a shell or two. On one occasion I was ordered to drive several sick men to the city in an ambulance, and as we struck the causeway a gunboat sent the customary shells at us. The sick men were nervous, and one of the men called out, "For God's sake, Ford, put down the curtains!" Toward the fall of 1863, after the evacuation of Morris Island by the Confederate troops, our company was withdrawn, and returned to the old camping ground at Heyward's place near Wappoo Cut.