CHAPTER VIII Continual Hope of Exchange of Prisoners--"Flag-of-Truce Fever!"--Attempted Escape by Tunneling--Repeated Escapes by Members of Water Parties, and how we Made the Roll-Call Sergeant's Count Come Out all Right every Time--Plot to Break Out by Violence, and its Tragic End. Our principal hope for relief from the increasing privations of prison life and from probable exhaustion, sickness, and death, lay in a possible exchange of prisoners. A belief was prevalent that the patients in hospital would be the first so favored. Hence strenuous efforts were sometimes made to convince the apothecary whom we called doctor, and who often visited us, that a prisoner was ill enough to require removal. Once in the institution, the patients got better food, something like a bed, medical attendance daily, and a more comfortable room. Some of them were shamming, lying in two senses and groaning when the physicians were present, but able to sit up and play euchre the rest of the day and half the night. This peculiar disease, this eagerness to get into hospital or remain there till exchanged by flag of truce, was known as the "flag-of-truce fever" or "flag-of-truce-on-the-brain!" I recall one striking instance. Lieutenant Gardner, already mentioned, had received six or eight hundred dollars in Confederate currency as the price of a gold watch. But like the prodigal in Scripture he was now in a far country, and had wasted his substance in what he called "righteous" living. And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that corner of the lower room, and he began to be in want. And he would fain have filled his belly with corn-cob-meal bread, or spoiled black beans, or the little potatoes which the swine didn't eat. And no man gave him enough. And he determined to go to hospital. He gave out that he was desperately sick. I at this time had "quarters" on the floor above. Word was brought to me that my friend was mortally ill, and would thank me to come down and take his last message to his relatives. Alarmed, I instantly went down. I found him with two or three splitting a small log of wood! "Gardner, I hear you are a little 'under the weather.'" "Dying, Colonel, dying!" "What appears to be your disease?" "Flag-o'-truce-on-the-brain!" "Ah, you've got the exchange fever?" "Yes; bad." "Pulse run high?" "Three hundred a minute." "Anything I can do for you?" "Yes, Colonel, beseech that fool doctor to send me to hospital. Tell him I'm on my last legs. Tell him I only want to die there. Appeal to him in behalf of my poor wife and babies." (Gardner, as I well knew, was a bachelor, and had no children--to speak of.) "Well, Lieutenant, I'll do anything I properly can for you. Is there anything else?" "Yes, Colonel; lend me your overcoat to wear to hospital; I'll send it back at once." "But, Lieutenant, you can't get into the hospital. Your cheeks are too rosy; you're the picture of health."