At nine o'clock of the fourth day after our incarceration, the Mier men were ordered to stand aside to receive their chains, a full ton of which had been brought out and laid in a heap, with a corresponding quantity of cumbrous, rudely-made clevises to fit around the ankles. Here stood the fat old officer in charge, a Captain Gozeman,5 who, from the immense protuberance of his abdominal region, our boys dubbed "Old Guts." This genius was exceedingly civil at times. He desired Fisher and myself to make choice of our chain. In fact, there was no choice between them, the lightest weighing about twenty pounds; and even if there had been any difference, neither of us was in a temper to make the choice. I felt that placing those irons upon me would make Mexico greatly my debtor, which some day I would cancel with a most usurious per centage. We held forth our feet, the one a right, and the other a left foot, and the son of Vulcan riveted us together as though we had been a pair of unbroken oxen just being introduced to the yoke. It is the habit of soldiers, in walking together, to step at the same time with their right foot, and then with their left. These chains subverted this well-established and strictly-observed custom, for one being chained by the right, and the other by the left ankle, those even and odd had to move together, or they would pay the penalty by a severe jerk. Colonel [245] Fisher and myself being first ironed, we laughed at the "jewelry," as the boys called the chains, but it was the laugh of a consuming vengeance. We thought, with King Lear's fool, that these were "cruel garters! Horses are tied by the heads, dogs and bears by the neck, monkeys by the loins, and men by the legs."6 We started to our cells, but the inconvenience of being coupled so closely together, and our un-Siamese locomotion, determined us to separate, and, upon reaching our apartment, we looked out for the means of breaking so large a chain. Texians are a most ingenious people, and are usually equal to the emergency. We soon found means to accomplish our purpose.

In our prison-room lay a loose stone, about one foot across, on one side of which it was slightly concave. In the room we also found a six-pound cannon shot. We sat flat upon the floor, with the stone in our laps, the concave side up, and covered with a blanket as a non-conductor of sound, to prevent the alarm of the sentinel at the door; then placing the middle link of the chain across the concave surface of the stone, and another fold of blanket over the link, we commenced hammering upon it until it came to fit the stone, turning it over and beating it back until it also fitted the other side, and thus, after twenty turnings of the link, it parted, leaving each about five feet of chain. When we had occasion to leave our apartment, we would take the broken ends of the chain in the same hand, and [246] walk past the officer with the same indifference of manner as though the chain were not parted.

Our companions, in turn, were all ironed, and many were the devices they resorted to in order to free themselves from their chains when not in the presence of the officers. In that horribly cold place, sleeping upon the cold pavement,