But the spectators who had gotten before the guns, heard Wirz’s excited yell, and remembering the consequences to themselves should the artillery be discharged, became frenzied with fear, and screamed, and fell down over and trampled upon each other in endeavoring to get away.  The guards on that side of the Stockade ran down in a panic, and the ten thousand prisoners immediately around us, expecting no less than that the next instant we would be swept with grape and canister, stampeded tumultuously.  There were quite a number of wells right around us, and all of these were filled full of men that fell into them as the crowd rushed away.  Many had legs and arms broken, and I have no doubt that several were killed.

It was the stormiest five minutes that I ever saw.

While this was going on two of my company, belonging to the Fifth Iowa Cavalry, were in hot pursuit of Curtis.  I had seen them start and shouted to them to come back, as I feared they would be set upon by the Raiders and murdered.  But the din was so overpowering that they could not hear me, and doubtless would not have come back if they had heard.

Curtis ran diagonally down the hill, jumping over the tents and knocking down the men who happened in his way.  Arriving at the swamp he plunged in, sinking nearly to his hips in the fetid, filthy ooze.  He forged his way through with terrible effort.  His pursuers followed his example, and caught up to him just as he emerged on the other side.  They struck him on the back of the head with their clubs, and knocked him down.

By this time order had been restored about us.  The guns remained silent, and the crowd massed around us again.  From where we were we could see the successful end of the chase after Curtis, and could see his captors start back with him.  Their success was announced with a roar of applause from the North Side.  Both captors and captured were greatly exhausted, and they were coming back very slowly.  Key ordered the balance up on to the scaffold.  They obeyed promptly.  The priest resumed his reading of the service for the condemned.  The excitement seemed to make the doomed ones exceedingly thirsty.  I never saw men drink such inordinate quantities of water.  They called for it continually, gulped down a quart or more at a time, and kept two men going nearly all the time carrying it to them.

When Curtis finally arrived, he sat on the ground for a minute or so, to rest, and then, reeking with filth, slowly and painfully climbed the steps.  Delaney seemed to think he was suffering as much from fright as anything else, and said to him: 

“Come on up, now, show yourself a man, and die game.”

Again the priest resumed his reading, but it had no interest to Delaney, who kept calling out directions to Pete Donelly, who was standing in the crowd, as to dispositions to be made of certain bits of stolen property:  to give a watch to this one, a ring to another, and so on.  Once the priest stopped and said: