It had been a stormy and comfortless night, and the picket station was very exposed.
It still rained in the morning when I strolled to the edge of the camp, looking out for the men, and wondering how they had stood it.

Presently they came striding along the road, at a great pace, with their shining rubber blankets worn as cloaks around them, the rain streaming from these and from their equally shining faces, which were almost all upon the broad grin, as they pealed out this remarkable ditty:-- HANGMAN JOHNNY.
"O, dey call me Hangman Johnny! O, ho! O, ho! But I never hang nobody, O, hang, boys, hang! O dey, call me Hangman Johnny! O, ho! O, ho! But we'll all hang togedder, O, hang, boys, hang!" My presence apparently checked the performance of another verse, beginning, "De buckra 'list for money," apparently in reference to the controversy about the pay-question, then just beginning, and to the more mercenary aims they attributed to the white soldiers.

But "Hangman Johnny" remained always a myth as inscrutable as "Becky Lawton." As they learned all their songs by ear, they often strayed into wholly new versions, which sometimes became popular, and entirely banished the others.

This was amusingly the case, for instance, with one phrase in the popular camp-song of "Marching Along," which was entirely new to them until our quartermaster taught it to them, at my request.

The words, "Gird on the armor," were to them a stumbling-block, and no wonder, until some ingenious ear substituted, "Guide on de army," which was at once accepted, and became universal.
"We'll guide on de army, and be marching along" is now the established version on the Sea Islands.
These quaint religious songs were to the men more than a source of relaxation; they were a stimulus to courage and a tie to heaven.