Our support consisted of two or three small troops of cavalry. Their camps were several miles in rear of our own. These cavalrymen did all the picketing. In the event of an attack we and they were charged with the duty of harassing the advance of the enemy and delaying him on his march to the railroad, seventeen miles away, long enough for troops to be sent down from Charleston or up from Savannah. It was a wild, free, gypsy-like life. We lived in the handsomely furnished houses, made free use of the very rich libraries, fished, played at chess, shot deer and turkeys in the woods, dozed upon “joggling boards” in sea-breeze-swept piazzas, and altogether did nothing most industriously and delightfully. There was one duty to be done, and that a very important one. It was necessary for some officer to make the grand rounds of the pickets every night. This task devolved upon me about once a week. The pickets were stationed at all available points of observation below, all points from which the channels could be seen. To visit them required an all night’s ride, which in that country is by no means an agreeable undertaking. The weeds rise above the head of a horseman, and the dew drips as rain might, from every leaf. The night rider becomes water soaked and chilled to the very bones, even during the fierce summer weather. During the autumn and winter a night ride on this subtropical coast brings with it a degree of suffering from cold which the fiercest Northern winter never produces. But it was absolutely necessary to visit the picket posts. Upon their efficiency depended our safety and that of the railroad we were set to defend. If a single picket slept, a fleet of gun-boats or ship’s launches might come to Bluffton wholly unannounced. The battery, without support at hand, would fall helpless into the enemy’s hands, and the railroad communication, on which the safety of Charleston and Savannah depended, would be broken. It was Christmas Eve, crisp and cool. A heap of fat hard pine was blazing in the great fireplace in our quarters. The negro servant was busy in the kitchen without. Our guests, half a dozen officers from the cavalry companies, were already assembled. We had invited them to dine with us upon a haunch of venison, a wild turkey, fish, oysters, crabs, shrimps, etc., all of which, except the first two, could be taken at any time within a hundred yards of the door. Our little party-giving promised to be a thoroughly successful bit of hospitality. Curry, the cook, had just begun to put the dinner on the table when a messenger came to report that Lieutenant C----, the officer appointed to make the picket rounds that night, was ill and could not go. It was my turn next and there was no escape. At the holiday season pickets especially need watching. I knew very well it would never do to leave them unvisited that night. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to turn the guests over to my messmate, the captain, and order my horse.