My health, which had been improving since I had the opportunity to breathe air unconfined by roofs and side walls, as it had been in Libby, was still improving and I made up my mind to attempt an escape on the first opportunity that offered itself. I watched both night and day for an opportunity to steal a boat ride down the Okmulgee River. One morning I was one of the squad sent out after wood, which was dumped in a disorderly pile near the gate. Seeing a hole several feet deep and large enough for me to crawl into, I asked one of the detail to cover the hole over with other sticks of wood after I had crawled in. This was soon done and the detail left with their luggage. It was now only eight o'clock in the morning and I was left outside of the stockade, but still a prisoner in the woodpile near the gate. The day was long and the sun's rays poured down with great heat, and how I longed for a drink of water! Still I was braved to the self-denial, owing to very anxiety to reach the boat undiscovered. But my liberty was not to be obtained in that way. About six o'clock the guard came after its wood and my concealment was at an end. They ordered me out, marched me up to Captain Tabb's office, where I received some unasked for advice, after which I was marched back to the gate and turned in. However, I succeeded in getting a hasty drink of water from the spring, and then had another chance to meditate upon the uncertainty of freedom and the certainty of another long term under close surveillance, before I would again have an opportunity to attempt another escape. In the latter part of July the Union army, commanded by General Sherman, took possession of Atlanta, only sixty miles north-west of us. A cavalry raiding party came near enough to our prison for us to hear the battle which resulted in their repulse. The cavalry was defeated, some driven away and others captured, the officers taken being turned into the prison with us. Then a new organization was effected to plan another escape, though no definite time was set for the attempt, all that being left to ten of the ranking officers, at whose command we were ready to go and obey orders; but it all ended in such a complete fizzle that I refrain from giving the details. As soon as the nine days' armistice between the two armies was declared off and Sherman's army, instead of turning and following Hood back north, came rushing toward us, we were put aboard the cars and taken to Charleston, S.C., and there confined in the Charleston jail yard, right under the fire of our own guns. Now we were completely corralled in a small, dirty old pen, without either shade or shelter, save a solemn old gallows which cast a gloomy shadow over us, reminding us of the last victim who had his neck broken by the order of the self-constituted authorities now holding sway with such high hand.