broil him, they would probably crown him king.

But the pick and pluckiest of the pirates died a dirty death. The wheel of fortune, which seemed always to be carrying them upwards, sooner or later bore them under. There came a day when the man-of-war had the best of it, and the black flag struck to the colours of the King. Not one noted pirate in a hundred died betwixt the sheets. The shadow of the gallows went before him; his final port was Execution Dock.

THE WAY OUT OF LIBBY

I

It was on September 20, 1863, that Colonel Thomas Rose, of the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteers afterwards a Captain in the 16th United States Infantry-was taken prisoner at the battle of Chickamauga. On his way to Richmond he gave his guards the slip, wandered for twenty-four hours in the pine forests with a broken foot, was retaken by a troop of Confederate (Southern) horse, and carried to Libby prison, Richmond, on October 1, 1863. The prison was packed with officers of the Federal Army, whom the "rebs" had gathered on many

fields.

Libby Prison stood detached upon a hill, which descended abruptly to a canal. The building was divided into three sections, which were originally separated by solid walls. Through the walls of the two large upper floors, where the prisoners of war were lodged, the Confederates cut doors, but between the three chambers on the first floor there was no communication whatever. Three cellars, significantly known as Rat Hell,

occupied the space immediately beneath the lower floor; and, like the rooms of that floor, the cells were divided by walls.

Most of the Chickamauga prisoners were confined in the two wide upper rooms of the middle portion of the prison, but Colonel Rose was in the topmost chamber of the eastern wing, distinguished as Upper Gettysburg. From the hour of his arrival he thought only of escape.

Now the prisoner of war, unless he has the misfortune to lie under sentence of death (in which case his captivity is never of long duration) or is suspected of some bold design of flight, is seldom guarded with the same stringency as the convict. Colonel Rose and his comrades in Libby, so far from being in solitary confinement, had a large licence of intercourse; and except for the intermittent visits of the guard, they were watched only from without. It was, indeed, believed that Confederate spies, disguised in the uniforms of Federals, were sent in occasionally as prisoners to overhear and report any possible schemes of prison-breaking, but no device of this kind was ever brought to light in Libby. Colonel Rose, therefore, went to work at first with a certain measure of security, but he was very cautious in making choice of a partner in the plan he contemplated.

From the windows of the Upper Gettysburg he had observed workmen descending into a

sewer from the middle of a street which bordered the canal, and he surmised that the sewer had several openings into the canal eastwards and westwards of the prison. Making his way down to Rat Hell one dark afternoon, he was stealthily exploring there when he came upon a fellow prisoner, Major A. G. Hamilton, of the 12th Kentucky Cavalry. Their errand was the same; they fell to confidences, and clapped up friendship on the spot. Their first efforts were unsuccessful. Alterations in the prison cut them off from their original base of operations—a tunnel which (with a broken shovel and two case-knives) they had begun to open at the back of a small kitchen in a corner of Rat Hell. Moreover, their excursions by night and conferences by day had been observed by other prisoners, who, concluding that flight was their game, grew exceedingly inquisitive. The two conspirators resolved accordingly to form a league among the likeliest and most trusty of their companions. To do this would be to increase to some extent the chances of detection; but this risk, they argued, would be compensated by the strength which would be gained in the event of a surprise by the guard. It would have been an easy task enough to overpower the sentinels, but no less easy would it be for the fugitives to bring down upon them the whole armed strength of the town, and they were very imperfectly informed

as to the numbers and position of the nearest troops on their own side.

Seventy men were forthwith sworn in by Colonel Rose, who took his band by small detachments to the cellars on convenient nights and instructed every member in his own part in the plot. All was at length in readiness for flight, and on a cloudy night the seventy-two were gathered in Rat Hell, awaiting the signal of their leader. On a sudden, a signal of another kind was given by the man whom Rose had posted at the floor opening, in the kitchen. Footsteps of the guard! But Colonel Rose had drilled his men so well that each stood quietly in his place till his turn came to climb back by the rope ladder to the floor above. When every man was up and stealing to his proper sleeping-quarters Rose himself mounted and drew after him the ladder of rope, not ten seconds before the officer of the guard thrust his lantern in at the door of the lower sleepingchamber. Rose, unable to gain his own place in the ranks of the sleepers on the floor, had seated himself at a table, with an old pipe between his lips, as if his habit were to sleep in that position under the influence of tobacco. The officer stared at him, and passed down the

room.

At that time, however, midnight visits of the guard were unusual, and the conspirators