On my return trip the steamer stopped again at Island No. 10. My feet had scarcely touched the shore till I was surrounded by soldiers, who reported that the officers had eaten up most of the potatoes, and that they had been given only about three messes. I was indignant, and went directly to the colonel’s headquarters with the complaint. He was greatly surprised, and sent for the quartermaster and other officials, who listened to the complaints very serenely. When they had heard all I had to say the quartermaster said,-- “You only gave us one hundred bushels of potatoes; how long did you think they would last?” “About a month I thought.” “We have ten companies of one hundred men each. Every company got ten bushels. That divided among one hundred men would only give them about two messes apiece.” “That is so,” I confessed with some confusion. “I see,” he continued, “that you are not accustomed to feeding armies.” “If that is the way they eat, I don’t want the task of feeding them. I accept your explanation, and beg you to excuse my ignorance in these matters.” And so we parted. I had a few minutes later, as the boys gathered about me at the landing, the privilege of explaining why they did not get more than two or three messes of potatoes,--that there were too many of them. That if there had been ten men and one hundred bushels of potatoes, instead of one thousand men and one hundred bushels of potatoes, they would have fared better. SAVED BY LEMONADE. The many-colored signal lights of the fleet of steamers at Milliken’s Bend, and the bright camp-fires on the land, that glowed with such unwonted splendor in the gloaming, soon all faded out of sight as our boat steamed away toward St. Louis; and soon the black curtain of night shut us in with its thick heavy folds like a funeral pall, and our fight with disease and death began in earnest. Never before in the history of wars, so full of untold agonies, did the timbers of a steamer bear up such a burden of pain, despair, and death, as did the _City of Memphis_ as she steamed away from Sherman’s army. Wherever there was room for a sick or wounded soldier, on the cabin floor without mattress or pillow, in the staterooms, under the stateroom berths, out on the guards, on the top, or hurricane deck, on the lower deck, every space was filled with sore, weary, aching human bodies, mangled or fever-smitten. Of the seven hundred and fifty sick and wounded on board, about twenty-five were delirious; and their pitiful cries mingled with the whirr of the wheels, and the splash of the waters, as the monster boat, with its heart of fire and its breath of steam, pulled heavily against the mighty tides of the Mississippi River, were heart-breaking. No one who was on that boat can ever forget that first night out. Nor can I be charged with over-drawing the picture. No pencil can paint it black enough.