348 HISTORY OF BROOKLYN.

receive their rations of food, which, that day, they were obliged to eat uncooked. Ten corpses were found below on the morning which succeeded that memorable 4th of July, and many others were badly wounded.

Equal to this, in fiendish barbarity, is the incident related by Silas Talbot, as occurring on the Stromboli, while he was a prisoner upon that ship. The prisoners, irritated by their ill treatment, rose one night on the guard, “the commander being on shore, and several, in attempting to escape, were either killed or wounded. The captain got on board just as the fray was quelled, when a poor fellow lying on deck, bleeding, and almost exhausted by a mortal wound, called him by name, and begged him, ‘for God’s sake, a little water, for he was dying!’ The captain applied a light to his face, and directly exclaimed: ‘What! is it you, d—n you? IÕm glad you’re shot. If I knew the man that shot you, I’d give him a guinea! Take that, you d—d rebel rascal!’ and instantly dashed his foot in the face of the dying man!!”(1) The conduct of the guards, indeed, according to all accounts, seems to have been as brutal as it was possible to be, and was rivalled only by that of the nurses. These nurses, numbering about six or eight, were prisoners, and, according to universal testimony; were all thieves, who, callous to every sentiment of duty or humanity, indulged in card-playing and drinking, while their fellows were entreating for water, and dying in their sight for want of those attentions which they refused to give them.

Not less revolting than these scenes of cruelty and distress, was the manner in which the inanimate bodies of these martyred prisoners were hastily and indecorously consigned to the earth—in some

1 “Two young men, brothers, belonging to a rifle-corps, were made prisoners, and sent on board the Jersey, The elder took the fever, and, in a few days, became delirious. One night (his end was fast approaching), he became calm and sensible, and lamenting his hard fate, and the absence of his mother, begged for a little water. His brother, with tears, entreated the guard to give him some, but in vain. The sick youth was soon in his last struggles, when his brother offered the guard a guinea for an inch of candle, only that he might see him die. Even this was denied. ‘Now,’ said he, dry ing up his tears, ‘if it please. God that I ever regain my liberty, IÕll be a most bitter enemy!’ He regainedhis liberty, rejoined the army, and, when the war ended, be had eight large, and one hundred and twent-seven small notches on his rifle-stock!”—Med. Repos. Hex., ii., vol. iii., p. 72.