I was very tired, but could not at once go to sleep, and for some time I remained awake amid my strange surroundings and looked out into the night and listened to the wild weird noises of the camp. Above me, through the tangle of twigs and vines appeared the starlit sky; the campfires shone on either hand far out into the night, and away over the fields and forests came the good night bugle calls, the soldier's lullaby, softly saying "go-to-sleep, go-to-sleep, go-to-sleep, soldier, sleep, go-to-sleep." From the mule corral came volley upon volley of subdued, tongue-tied braying, and the old steamboat engines coughed down at the river landing. Those strange sounds at last sent me also to dreamland, but I believe my last sleepy thoughts were tapping at the window of my old northern home. I have already related in this article more than one day's experience in my war life, unlike what I intended to do at the onset, but all is so closely linked together that I felt I must add the first night in camp to the article to make it complete, and so I have added more. The reveille on the succeeding morning brought us tired fellows out all too soon. It seemed that scarcely ten minutes had elapsed since retiring, when the wild blasts of bugles, jarring drums and screaming of fifes aroused us from slumber. Ike rolled up onto his elbow and remarked to me, "Them fellers out there are jovial cusses, aint they, pounded their drums and things all times of the night." I told him I guessed this was one of the calls. "Might have waited 'till we got fixed up a little fore they called," said Ike, sitting up on the blanket. "I supposed we come to stay all night," with a questioning squint at me. "No," I told him, "this is a different kind of a call. The thundering they gave us last night just as we went to bed was what they call tattoo, and meant to go to bed. The few whacks of the drum and snorts of the bugle afterwards meant to put out the lights, and this racket means to fall in for roll call." "Wal, I swow," said Ike, pulling on one of his boots. "They treat us like a lot of kids, don't they? But I say, you don't pretend to imagine if a feller should take a cramp 'r some other pain in the night, he couldn't strike up a light to find his pills nor nothin', do ye?" I told him I thought not, because in war times, if every soldier was allowed to fire up in the night at will the enemy could shoot us just as well as in the day time. "B'gosh, there's sense in that," replied Ike, as we fell in for roll call. That day we elected our officers. [Illustration] CHAPTER I. SCENES ENROUTE. IT was May 7, 1863 when Company B, 113th Illinois Vol. Infantry, to which I belonged, started from Milliken's Bend, La., with the balance of Grant's army for the rear of Vicksburg. That day we marched 14 miles and at night camped on a beautiful plantation and procured raw cotton from a nearby gin to sleep on.