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Updated: June 26, 2025
Some nights, when the captain permitted a longer halt than usual and when camp-fires blazed before the tents, men played the violin and sang and danced. Each man was his own cook. Three or four occupied each tent. In the company was one woman, with two children. She was an Irishwoman; but she bore the name of Shubert, from which we may infer that her husband was not an Irishman.
Bourgeois considers as predisposing moments the smoke of the camp-fires, the want of sleep, the marching during the night, and describes the affection as follows: The conjunctiva became dark red, swelled together with the eyelids; there was a greatly exaggerated lachrymal secretion associated with severe pain; the eyes were constantly wet, the photophobia reached such a degree that the men became totally blind, suffered most excruciating pain and fell on the road.
We were very soon to leave the river and enter the lake. From the boughs of overarching trees swept beards of dark gray moss some yards in length, that waved to and fro in the gathering twilight like folds of funereal crape. There were camp-fires at the wooding stations, the flames of which painted the foliage extraordinary colors and spangled it with sparks.
Some had no coats and drew their tattered blankets about them, sitting upon their haunches, like Indians, about the camp-fires. I do not recall a single querulous or ill-natured complaint.
Sometimes a kaleidoscope series of pictures would go jumbling through his brain, as though some imp were unrolling the scroll of his brain backward, forward, and sidewise; a whirling cloud of sand, a driving sheet of visible bullets; a hose-pipe that shot streams of melted steel; a forest of smokestacks; the flash of trailing phosphorescent foam; a clear sky, full of stars the mountains clear and radiant through sunlit vapours; camp-fires shooting flames into the darkness, and men and guns moving past them.
They tore off the fence-palings to build their camp-fires; they broke down young fruit trees and pulled up evergreen shrubs; they ransacked barns and outhouses, stole hoarded apples, killed chickens, and frightened the negro slaves out of their small wits.
They were mostly Delawares, with many Shawnees, and a few Hurons among them. It was soon evident, however, that for the present, at least, the Indians did not intend any hostile demonstration. They were quiet in manner, and busy about their teepees and camp-fires, but there was an absence of the curiosity that had characterized the former sojourns of Indians at the peaceful village.
The absence of camp-fires allowed the evening to make apparent its quality of faint silver light in which the blue clothes of the throng became black, and the faces became white expanses, void of expression. There was considerable excitement a short distance from the group around the doorstep.
On shore the dripping arrivals crowded about the red camp-fires drying their soaking uniforms, cooking, eating, singing, laughing, and filled with irrepressible happiness at having escaped from their "prison hulks" and reached Cuba at last.
At about sundown the wind fell and after supper it was as calm as it had been before the storm started. "Told you there wasn't any use of getting wet pounding down stakes," growled Lew Flapp. He had done his work in a slip-shod fashion, staying out but a minute or two for that purpose. It still rained, so building camp-fires was out of the question.
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