GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIESFrom "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.GENERAL DUKE SAMPLES THE PIES
Tom took one glance at the chief of his captors and then saluted with real respect as he replied:
"I am Thomas Strong, sir, second-lieutenant, U. S. A."
"Upon my word, sir, I am sorry to hear it. We don't make war on boys. If you had been, as I thought, just masquerading as a soldier, I would have turned you loose at once. Now I must take you with us."
Ten minutes afterwards, the little group with Tom, disarmed but unbound, in the middle of it, was galloping northeastward. A few yards ahead of it the officer rode with a free bridle rein, chatting with an aide beside him. He rode like a centaur. Tom thought him one of the finest soldiers he had ever seen. And so he was.He was Gen. Basil W. Duke, brother-in-law, second in command, and historian of General Morgan. He was a soldier and a gentleman, if ever God made one.
A fortnight later, a fortnight of almost constant fighting, much of it with home-guards and militia who feared Morgan too much to fight him hard, but part of it with seasoned soldiers who fought as good Americans should, Morgan crossed the Ohio again into the comparative safety of West Virginia. He took across with him his few prisoners, including Tom. Then, finding that the mass of his brigade had been cut off from crossing, the Confederate general detached a dozen men to take the prisoners south while he himself with most of the troopers with him recrossed to where danger beckoned. On July 26, 1862, at Salineville, Ohio, not far from Pittsburg, trapped, surrounded, and outnumbered, he surrendered with the 364 men who were all that were left of his gallant band. Our government made the mistake of treating him and his officers not as captured soldiers butas arrested bandits. They were sent to the Ohio State Penitentiary, whence Morgan made a daring escape not long afterwards. He made his way to freedom on Southern soil. Meanwhile, Tom had been taken to captivity on that same soil. He was in Libby Prison, at the Confederate Capital, Richmond, Virginia.
His journey thither had been long and hard and uneventful, except for the gradual loss of the few things he had with him. His pistol and his money had been taken when he was first captured. Now, as he was turned over to one Confederate command after another, bit by bit his belongings disappeared. His boots went early in the journey. His cap was plucked from his head. His uniform was eagerly seized by a Confederate spy, who meant to use it in getting inside the Union lines. When he was finally turned over to the Provost Marshal of the chief Confederate army, commanded by Gen. Robert E. Lee, he was bareheaded and barefoot and had nothing to wear except an old Confederate gray shirt and the ragged remains of what hadonce been a pair of Confederate gray trousers, held about his waist by a string. He was hungry and tired and unbelievably dirty. The one good meal he had had on his long march had been given him at Frederick, Maryland, by a delightful old lady whom Tom always believed to be Barbara Frietchie.
It was August now. On July 4, Grant had taken Vicksburg and Meade had defeated Lee at Gettysburg. The doom of the Confederacy had begun to dawn. None the less Robert E. Lee's tattered legions, forced back from the great offensive in Pennsylvania to the stubborn defense of Richmond, trusted, worshiped, and loved their great general.
Meade, the Union commander, by excess of caution, had let Lee escape after Gettysburg. He did not attack the retreating foe. Lincoln was deeply grieved.
"We had them within our grasp," he said, throwing out his long arms. "We had only to stretch forth our hands and they were ours.And nothing I could say or do could make our army move."
Four days afterwards, General Wadsworth of New York, a gallant fighter, one of the corps commanders who had tried to spur the too-prudent Meade into attacking, came to the White House.
"Why did Lee escape?" Lincoln eagerly asked him.
"Because nobody stopped him."
And that was the truth of it. If Lee had been stopped, the war would have ended nearly two years before it did end. It is a wonderful proof of Lincoln's wonderful sense of justice that though he repeated: "Our army held the war in the hollow of their hand and they would not close it," he added at once: "Still, I am very, very grateful to Meade for the great service he did at Gettysburg."
Lee was a son of "Light-Horse Harry" Lee, the daring cavalry commander of the Revolution and the author of the immortal phrase aboutWashington: "First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen." Robert E. Lee had had an honorable career at West Point and in the war with Mexico and was Lieutenant-Colonel of Engineers in the United States army when the war between the States began. He loved his country and her flag, but he had been bred in the belief that his loyalty was due first to Virginia rather than to the Union. When the Old Dominion, after first refusing to secede, finally did so, Lieut.-Col. Lee, U. S. A., became General Lee, C. S. A. Great efforts were made to keep him on the Union side. It is said he was offered the chief command of our army. Sadly he did his duty as he saw it. He put aside the offers made him, resigned his commission, and left Arlington for Richmond.
Arlington, now a vast cemetery of Union soldiers, crowns a hill on the Virginia side of the Potomac. The city of Washington lies at its feet. The valley of the Potomac spreads before it. From the portico of the old-fashioned house,a portico upheld by many columns, one can look towards Mt. Vernon, not many miles away, but hid from sight by clustering hills. The house was built in 1802 by George Washington Parke Custis, son of Washington's stepson, who was his aide at Yorktown in 1783, and grandson of Martha Washington. Parke Custis, who died in 1858, directed in his will that his slaves should be freed in five years. Lee, his son-in-law and executor, scrupulously freed them in 1863 and gave them passes through the Confederate lines. He had already given freedom to his own slaves. Long before the war, he wrote from Fort Brown, Texas, to his wife: "In this enlightened age there are few, I believe, but will acknowledge that slavery as an institution, is a moral and political evil in any country.... I think it is a greater evil to the white than the black race."
ArlingtonArlingtonCopyright by Underwood & Underwood. New York.
Robert E. Lee was one of the greatest four Virginians. He ranks with George Washington, George Mason, and Thomas Jefferson. No praise could be greater. When "the Lost Cause," as the Southerners fondly call their great fight for what they believed to be right, reeled down to decisive defeat, the general whom they had worshiped in war proved himself a great patriot in peace. His last years were passed as President of Washington and Lee University in Virginia. Long before his death, his name was honored by every fair-minded man on the Northern as well as the Southern side of Mason and Dixon's line. One of the noblest eulogies of him was voiced upon the centennial of his birth, January 9, 1907, at Washington and Lee University, by Charles Francis Adams. The best blood of Massachusetts honored the best blood of Virginia. Our country was then again one country and all of it was free.
Tom Strong was standing with a group of other prisoners, all Northern officers, under guard, beside the Provost Marshal's tent at Lee's headquarters. These were upon a little knoll, from which the eye ranged over the longlines of rotten tents, huts, and heaps of brush that gave such shelter as they could to the ragged, hungry, and undaunted legions of the Confederacy. It was early in the morning. Scanty breakfasts were cooking over a thousand fires. From the cook-tent at headquarters, there came an odor of bubbling coffee that made the prisoners' hunger the harder to bear. The whole camp was strangely silent.
Then, in the distance, there was a storm of cheering. It gained in sound and shrillness. The soldiers poured out of their tents by the thousand. Those who had hats waved them; those who had not waved their arms; and every throat joined in the famous "rebel yell." Through the shouting thousands rode a half-dozen superbly mounted horsemen, at their head a gallant figure, with close-cropped white beard, whiskers, and mustache, seated upon a superb iron-gray horse, sixteen hands high, the famous Traveler.
GEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELERGEN. ROBERT E. LEE ON TRAVELER
It was Robert E. Lee, the one hope of the Confederacy. Even his iron self-control almost broke, as he saw the passionate joy with which he was hailed by the survivors of the gallant gray army he had launched in vain against the bayonet-crowned hills of Gettysburg. A flush almost as red as that of youth crept across his pale cheeks and a mist crept into his eyes. His charger bore him proudly up the grassy knoll where the Union prisoners were huddled together. As his glance swept over them, he noted with surprise the youthfulness of the boy who stood in the front line. Many a boy as young as Tom or even younger was in the ranks Lee led. Many an old man bent under the weight of his gun in those ranks. The Confederacy, by this time almost bled white, was said to have "robbed the cradle and the grave" to keep its armies at fighting strength. The North, with many more millions of people, had not been driven to do this. Tom was one of the few boys in the armies of the Union.
"Who is this?" asked Lee, as he checked Traveler before the group.
"Thomas Strong, sir," answered the boy.
"Your rank?"
"Second-lieutenant, sir."
"Where were you captured?"
"In Ohio, sir, by General Morgan."
Tom was faint with hunger as he was put through this little catechism. As he made the last answer, he reeled against the next prisoner, Col. Thomas E. Rose, of Indiana, who caught and held him. Lee misunderstood the movement. His lip curled with disgust as he said:
"Are you—a boy—drunk?"
Tom was too far gone to answer, but Rose and a half-dozen others answered for him.
"Not drunk, but hungry, General."
"I beg your pardon," the courteous Virginian replied, "but at least you shall be hungry no longer. My staff and I will postpone our breakfast until you have eaten. Pompey!" An old negro came out of the cook-tent. He had been one of George Washington Parke Custis's slaves. When freed, he had refused to leave "Marse Robert," whose cook he had become. He wore the remains of a Confederate uniform."Pompey, give these gentlemen our breakfast. We will wait."
"But—but—Marse Robert, I'se dun got real coffee dis mornin'."
"Our involuntary guests," said Lee with a gentle smile as he turned to the prisoners, "will, I hope, enjoy the real coffee."
And enjoy it they did. It and the cornbread and bacon that came with it were nectar and ambrosia to the hungry prisoners. The only fleck upon the feast was when one of them, in his hurry to be served, spoke rudely to old Pompey. The negro turned away without a word, but his feelings were deeply hurt. When the Union officer hurled after him a word of foul abuse, Pompey turned back, laid his hand upon his ragged uniform, and said:
"I doesn't objeck to de pussonal cussin', sah, but you must 'speck de unicorn."
After that the "unicorn" and the fine old negro who wore it were both amply respected. When everything in sight had been eaten, the prisoners were ordered to fall in line. Theirguards stood in front of the little column, beside it, behind it.
"Forward, march!"
They marched southward for a few miles, tramped through the swarming, somber streets of Richmond, and reached Libby Prison. Its doors closed behind them with a clang. Captivity in the open had been hard enough to bear. This new kind of captivity, within doors, with barred windows, was to be harder yet. Tom was to spend six weary months in Libby Prison.
It was while he was there that Abraham Lincoln made his wonderful Gettysburg speech.
The battlefield of Gettysburg was made sacred by the men who died there for Freedom's sake and also by the men who died there for the sake of what they honestly thought were the rights of the Slave States. Congress made the battlefield a Soldiers' Cemetery. It was to be dedicated to its great memories on November 19, 1863. The morning before a special train left Washington for Gettysburg. It carriedPresident Lincoln, Secretary of State Seward, two other members of the Cabinet, the two private secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, the distinguished Pennsylvanian, Wayne MacVeagh, later U. S. Attorney-General and later still our Minister to Italy, and others of lesser note. Among those latter was the Hon. Thomas Strong, who had been made one of the party by Lincoln's kind thoughtfulness. It was he who afterwards told his son the story of Lincoln's Gettysburg speech, scarcely regarded at the moment, but long since recognized as one of the masterpieces of English literature.
The little town of Gettysburg was in a ferment that November night, when the President's train arrived. It was full of people and bands and whisky. Crowds strolled through the streets, serenading statesmen and calling for speeches with an American crowd's insatiable appetite for talky-talk. "MacVeagh," says Hay, "made a most beautiful and touching speech of five minutes," but another Pennsylvanian made a most disgusting and drunkenspeech of many minutes. Lincoln and most of his party of course had no share in all this brawling merriment. He and Seward had talked briefly to shouting thousands early in the evening.
On the way up from Washington, the President had sat in a sad abstraction. He took little part in the talk that buzzed about him. Once, when MacVeagh was vehemently declaiming about the way the Southern magnates were misleading the Southern masses, Lincoln said with a weary smile one of those sayings of his which will never be forgotten. "You can fool part of the people all the time; you can fool all the people part of the time; but you can't fool all the people all the time." Then he became silent again. He did not know what he was to say on the morrow. The chief oration was to be by Edward Everett of Massachusetts, a trained orator, fluent and finished in polished phrase. He had been Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to England, Secretary of State, United States Senator. He was handsome, distinguished,graceful. The ungainly President felt that he and his words would be but a foil to Everett and his sonorous sentences, sentences that were sure to come rolling in like "the surge and thunder of the Odyssey." Everett had graduated from Harvard, Lincoln from a log-cabin. Both must face on the morrow the same audience.
The President searched his pockets and found the stub of a pencil. From the aisle of the car, he picked up a piece of brown wrapping paper, thrown there by Seward, who had just opened a package of books in the opposite seat. He penciled a few words, bent his head upon his great knotted hand in thought, then penciled a few more. Then he struck out some words and added others, read his completed task and did not find it good. He shook his head, stuffed the brown wrapping paper into his pocket, and took up again his interrupted talk with MacVeagh.
At eleven the next morning, from an open-air platform on the battlefield, Everett held the vast audience through two hours of fervent speech,fervent with patriotism, fervent also with bitterness against the men he called "the Southern rebels." His speech was literature and his voice was music. As the thunder of his peroration ended a thunderstorm of applause began. When it, too, died away, there shambled to the front of the platform an ungainly, badly dressed man, contrasting sharply and in every way disadvantageously with Everett of the silver tongue. This man's tongue betrayed him too. He tried to pitch his voice to reach all that vast audience and his first words came in a squeaking falsetto. A titter ran through the crowd. Lincoln stopped speaking. There were a few seconds of painful silence. Then he came to his own. With a voice enriched by a passionate sincerity, he began again and finished his Gettysburg speech. Here it is:
"Fourscore and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this Continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whetherthat nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of it as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow, this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or to detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation,under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."
The President ceased to speak. There was no thunderstorm of applause such as had followed Everett's studied sentences and polished periods. There was no applause at all. One long stir of emotion throbbed through the silent throng, but did not break the silence. Then the multitude dispersed, talking of what Everett had said, thinking of what Lincoln had said. Most of the notables on the platform thought the President's speech a failure. Time has shown that it was one of the greatest things even he ever did.
Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews has written in her short story "The Perfect Tribute" the history of the Gettysburg speech. The boy who would know what manner of man our Abraham Lincoln was should read "The Perfect Tribute." One of the characters in the story, a dying Confederate officer, says to Lincoln without knowing to whom he was speaking:"The speech so went home to the hearts of all those thousands of people that when it ended it was as if the whole audience held its breath—there was not a hand lifted to applaud. One might as well applaud the Lord's prayer—it would be sacrilege. And they all felt it—down to the lowest. There was a long minute of reverent silence, no sound from all that great throng—it seems to me, an enemy, that it was the most perfect tribute that has ever been paid by any people to any orator."
The Gettysburg speech was not for the moment. It is for all time.
Tom is Hungry—He Learns to "Spoon" by Squads—The Bullet at the Window—Working on the Tunnel—"Rat Hell"—The Risk of the Roll-call—What Happened to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy—Tom in Libby Prison—Hans Rolf Attends Him—Hans Refuses to Escape—The Flight Through the Tunnel—Free, but How to Stay So?
Tom is Hungry—He Learns to "Spoon" by Squads—The Bullet at the Window—Working on the Tunnel—"Rat Hell"—The Risk of the Roll-call—What Happened to Jake Johnson, Confederate Spy—Tom in Libby Prison—Hans Rolf Attends Him—Hans Refuses to Escape—The Flight Through the Tunnel—Free, but How to Stay So?
When the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm of merchants in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse, which fronted on Carey Street and extended back over land that sloped down to another street, which occupied all the space between the southern wall of the warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray praises in"The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands of the Old Dominion can no longer produce.
LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WARLIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR
The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was hungry. When Confederate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison was indescribably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of thefloor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which climbed upstairs at night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when they could. There was no furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at last sunk into uncomfortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened by the sharp command of the captain of his group:
"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!"
The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It seemed to the worn-out boy that he had just "spooned," when again he waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample of many nights.
On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life. He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking atthe broad valley of the James, when he was suddenly seized violently by the arm and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness. For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there.
If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him.
"You little fool, don't you know better than that?"
When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names. So he swallowed his wrath—which is an excellent thing to do with wrath—and answered quite meekly:
"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows?"
"Hasn't anybody told you that?"
"No, sir."
"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in acceptance of the implied apology. "The sentries outside have orders to fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be killed. Shake."
The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid. They strolled together up and down the big room now deserted by most of its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundredintelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom. More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts. He planned along new lines. He decided upon absolute secrecy, except for the menwho were actually to do the work. This work involved a good deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important the talk was.
"Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him. "Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."
So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance. He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the way to freedom.Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a fact.
That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from 10P.M.to 4A.M., so it was selected as the field of operation. Below the kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full of squealing rats. It was called "Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway to freedom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell. To do this it was necessary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed "S," like this:
Reverse S
The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen fireplace, the lower intoRat Hell. There were fourteen men in the secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife. One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place. This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant. He carefully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them. He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them, and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That night, as soonas the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn stone behind the fireplace. Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of the loosened mortar.
Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his stomach in the upper part of the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When he had widened the passage, one of the men took his place in it and drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping for breath. Finally, after many nights,Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept cautiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven. With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk outside. So they fled, taking their rope-ladder with them, and again, as ever, they replaced the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot.
The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay. Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and only a fewof the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to the sewer could be begun. Colonel Rose had long since decided, by forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to be. The measurement madeabove was now made below, the straw against the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of digging dirt.
FIGHTING THE RATSFIGHTING THE RATSFrom "Famous Adventures of the Civil War."The Century Co.
Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet long, the air in it became so foul that candles went out in it. So would the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long. Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two nights' rest out of three. But the progress made was pitifully slow. Man after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton had been brought out and was being fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered:
"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"
Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it was simple—when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end of the tunnel fanning air into it withtheir hats. But even so, many a candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and almost dead.
The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton was caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. Thepoor old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended in failure.
Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two roll-calls every day, at 9A.M.and 4P.M.How were the two absent men to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless, but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for its discovery would have made all future attempts to escape more dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back, crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of the line, slipped intoplace, and there answered for the missing men, without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught. Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored little clerk, lost his temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten to be counted. By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees, he went on to explain why he gave it.
"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns yere that ain't yere."
This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself caught the contagion and also began to laugh.
SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNELFrom "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4. Chickamauga room (upper); 5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6. Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11. East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12. South side Canal street, ten feet lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground sloping toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17. Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James River Towing Co.; 20. Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.
The dreaded order was laughed out of court and forgotten.
The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day, when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale, a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south, we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll begin tonight."
"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there—and a sentry."
"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose answered, "when we getto them. The thing now is to get there. We have fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."
It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed, he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight. Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.
"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"
Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and wriggled back. That morning at sunrise,when they peeked down from their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance would detect it. Of that they were sure.
Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned tothe new captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him. Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time, but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more confidential. His talk was on variousnatural enough themes, but it kept veering back to the chances of escape.
"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on, son?"
The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him, perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret. Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.
That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting men to tell his story,—a simple tale of Northern birth, of a Southern home, of beliefin the Union, of raising a guerilla company to fight for it, of capture in a raid on a Confederate supply-depot,—the unpleasant memory which had been troubling Tom came back and hammered at his head until suddenly, as if a flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle Mose's slave-cabin, with this man's hand clutching his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:
"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He was overseer on a plantation in Alabama. He 'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."
Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's eye fixed upon him. He had seen Tom whisper to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat down. Rose walked across the circle and sat beside him. He had snapped his fingers as he walked and half a dozen men had answered the signal and were now close at hand.
"What did you do before you turned guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.
"I don't know that that's any of your darned business," said Johnson.
"Answer me."
The stronger man dominated the weaker. The spy sulkily said:
"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."
"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"
"No."
"Ever do anything else in the South?"
"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such questions?"
The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:
"Major Hamilton."
"Here, sir," answered the Major.
"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before the war?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long?"
"Seven years."
"Who kept the general store there?"
"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."
"Did you know him?"
"Rather. We were chums. He and I left Jonesboro' together to join the army."
"Is this man he?"
Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his feet, cowering, covering his face with his hands. Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.
"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than he's General Grant."
By this time the whole prison community was crowded about Colonel Rose. The latter called again:
"Mr. Strong."
"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.
"Do you know this man?"
"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson on the Izzard plantation.
There was an ominous low growl from the audience. Yankee overseers of Southern plantations were not exactly popular in that crowd of Northern officers. And evidently this particular overseer had been lying. But Colonel Rose lifted his hand and said:
"Silence. No violence. What we do will be done decently and in order." After this impressive speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you would, would you?" and choked Johnson with every pound of strength he could put into the process. He had just seen him slip a bit of paper into his mouth and he meant to know what that paper was. It was plucked out of the spy's throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the spy's pencil had written:
"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows about it. Think Colonel Rose heads it."
It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report in his new business of being a spy. It put an end to all business on his part forever. Gagged and tied, he was pushed across the big room, while Tom watched uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to be done with the writhing man. Suddenly he understood, for he saw it done. Johnson was pushed into a window. Two kneeling men held his legs and another, standing beside him but screened by the wall, pushed him in front of the window. The Confederatesentry below obeyed his orders. There was no challenge, no warning. He aimed and fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws of the prison by looking out of the window. What had been Jake Johnson, Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed their own spy.
It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done to death was too much for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship of the long captivity during which he had been carried from Ohio to Virginia and worn out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the toil of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake Johnson did and for a few moments seemed as dead as the man was. He was taken to the hospital-room, but the hospital in Libby was usuallyonly the anteroom of the graveyard at Libby. One of the scarcest things in the Confederacy, the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The armies in the field needed far more doctors than there were in the whole South, at the outbreak of the war. Medical schools were quickly created, but the demand for doctors so far outran the supply that by this time ignorant country lads were being rushed through the schools, with reckless haste, so that they were graduated when they knew but little more than when they began. A so-called surgeon was handling his scalpel six months after he had been handling a plow. Some of them barely knew how to read and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals should be manned by the poorest of the poor among the graduates of these wretched schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is for Tom, gave him, however, care that was both skilful and tender.
A few hours after the righteous execution of Jake Johnson there had been thrust into Libby a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeighthours before. Among them towered a jovial, bearded giant, an army surgeon, Major Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with talk of what had happened there that day. The new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson and of Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had given his parole not to try to escape and had been allowed to station himself beside Tom's bed. Through that night and through the next day, he fought Tom's battle for him, doing all that man could do. When the boy struggled out of his delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming upon him, his first thought was that he was still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad car. His right hand plucked feebly at his left side, where he had then carried the dispatches Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and understood the movement.
"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's all right. Go to sleep."
And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything was all right and that he was home in New York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. Agracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who gave her days to caring for her country's enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's eyes gleamed with a mistaken belief.
"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled back and sank gently into a profound sleep, from which he awoke to life and health. Again a Hans Rolf had saved a Tom Strong's life.
Night after night passed, one night of work by each man followed by two of such rest as lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed. On the seventeenth night of the new tunnel work, Colonel Rose was digging away in it. It was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered and went out. The foul air closed in upon him. Hats were fanning to and fro, back in Rat Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not reach him. He felt himself suffocating. With one last effort he thrust his strong fists upward and broke through the surface. Soon revived by the rush of fresh air into the tunnel, he dragged himself out and found himself in theyard that had been their aim. The tunnel had reached its goal. He climbed out and studied the situation. A high fence screened the yard from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door screened it from the street. At threeA.M., February 6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to prison.
That morning he told his news. Most of the men wanted to try for freedom the next night, but there was much to do to erase all traces of their work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith discovered after their flight, it could be used later by other fugitives. With a rare unselfishness, they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile each of the fifteen had been authorized to tell one other man, so that thirty in all could make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt that this was the limit. A general prison-delivery would, he believed, result in a general recapture. Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep. a whisper of it spread through the prison.
When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he had been at once taken into the inner councils of the tunnel group. He had not expressed asmuch joy in the plan as Tom had expected. The reason of this was now revealed. He declined to go.
"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and Tom, "I gave my parole not to try to escape when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in order to be allowed to take care of him. I made up my mind not to ask to be relieved from it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected some plan to escape was on hand. And they seem to have forgotten all about it, for they haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in honor not to go. Don't bother, Tom." The boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't bother. 'Twon't be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I can save some lives here by staying. Don't bother. It's all right. I rather like this boarding-house."
The giant's great laugh rang out. The heartiness of it amazed the weary men scattered about the room. It brought smiles to lips thathad not smiled for many a day. Laughter that comes from a clean heart does good to all who hear it.
It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was an officer and a gentleman. Honor forbade it. Sadly, Tom left him.
On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when the chosen thirty had crawled down the inverted "S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col. H. C. Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly offered to stay behind, so that he could replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced them. But before he could get upstairs, some hundreds of men had come down. The secret was a secret no longer. There was a fierce struggle to get to the fireplace, a struggle all the fiercer because it had to be made in grim silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet away, on the other side of the wall, in the hospital. The bricks were taken out again. In all, one hundred and nine Union officers got through the hole. Then, warned by approaching daylight, the less fortunate in the fight for freedomput back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs, resolved to try their luck the next night, if the tunnel were not before that discovered.
Tom had wormed his way through the inverted "S" among the first fifteen. On the rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap upon the floor of Rat Hell. The huge rodents swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he sprang to his feet, threw off his tormentors, and ran across the room to the opening of the tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more ragged and his face and hands were bleeding from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this. Was he not on his way to freedom? On his way, yes; but the way was a long one. He might never reach the end. When he had pushed and pulled himself through the tunnel; when he had come out into the yard and gone through the shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in the canal street was at the further end of his beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and turned in the opposite direction,—when all thishad happened, he was out of prison, to be sure, but he was in the heart of the enemy's country, with all the risks of recapture or of death still to be run.
The men had all been cautioned to stroll away in a leisurely fashion, on no account to run or even to walk fast, and not to try to get away in groups of more than two or three. It was hard to walk slowly to the next corner. The boy made himself do so, however. Half a block ahead of him on the side street, he saw a couple of men walking with a somewhat faster stride. He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate patrol turned the corner of Carey Street. He heard the two men challenged and he heard the little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief moment of freedom had passed. He stepped to one side of the wooden sidewalk and crawled under it. There was just space enough for him to lie at full length. Hurrying feet, the feet of men hunting other men, trampled an inch above his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it must be heard. The patrol reached the streetalong the canal and peered into the darkness there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering gas-lamp. Fortunately, nobody came out of the shed just then. The sentry happened to be coming towards it and the men inside were waiting for him to turn. The patrol had no thought of a general jail-delivery. It turned back with its two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head to Carey Street, and took its captives to the prison. The boy crawled out from under the sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of them, reached the corner. He ran down to them and warned them of the Carey Street patrol. The three men turned with him and walked along the canal. It was just after midnight. Not a soul was stirring. Not a light showed. As they walked unquestioned, their spirits rose. How fine to be free.
Tom Hides in a River Bank—Eats Raw Fish—Jim Grayson Aids Him—Down the James River on a Tree—Passing the Patrol Boats—Cannonaded—The End of the Voyage.
Tom Hides in a River Bank—Eats Raw Fish—Jim Grayson Aids Him—Down the James River on a Tree—Passing the Patrol Boats—Cannonaded—The End of the Voyage.
Tom had made up his mind how he would try to reach the Union lines. As he had escaped before from the locomotive-foray by pushing boldly into the enemy's country, so he would do now. He would try his luck in following the James River to the sea, for off the river's mouth he knew there lay a squadron of Northern ships, blockading Hampton Roads. The "Merrimac's" attempt of March, 1862, had never been repeated. Our flag was still there, in these February days of 1864, and Tom knew it. He had resolved to seek it there.
He explained his plan to his three comrades. They would steal a boat, row or drift down the James by night, hide and sleep by day, foragefor food upon the rich plantations, many of them the historic homes of Virginia, that bordered the broad river, and finally float to freedom where our war-ships lay. But the three men would have nothing to do with it. By land the Union lines were much nearer. They meant to stick to the land. They asked the boy to go with them, but he stuck to his plan. So, with hearty handshakes and a whispered "good luck!" he left them, went over a canal-bridge, and found himself upon the bank of the river. He was again alone.
Of his three temporary companions, one finally reached our lines, one was shot within a few hundred yards of his goal, and one was recaptured. Of the 109 who escaped from Libby, 48 were caught and thrust back into prison.
Tom walked along the river bank, prying in the welcome darkness for a boat. It would not have been difficult to steal it, if he could have found it. But at this point the James is wide and shallow and full of miniature rapids. It was utterly bare of boats. The boy's search couldnot be carried on after dawn. He spent that day hidden in a clump of willows by the waterside. The excitement of the night had kept him up. Now the reaction from it left him limp and miserable and hungry as he never remembered being hungry before. It was hard work to "grin and bear it," but at least he tried to grin and he reminded himself a thousand times through that long, long day that he was much better off than if he were still a prisoner in Libby.
That night he followed the bank until he was below the city, still without finding a boat. There had been plenty of boats along this part of the river the morning before, but as soon as the escape from Libby had been discovered, all boats had been seized by the military authorities, to prevent their being used by the fugitives. They had been taken to a point below the town. As Tom wormed himself cautiously near this point, very cautiously, for he heard voices upon the bank above his head, and also the crackle of a camp-fire, he saw in the gray dawn a flotillaof boats just below him. At first sight, his heart leaped into his mouth with joy. At the second sight, it sank down into his boots. For above the boats he saw a big Confederate camp and beyond them he saw a half-dozen small craft, negroes at the oars and armed men at bow and stern, patrolling the river. Hope left him. He crawled into a hiding-place in the bank. He was so hungry that he cried. But not for long. Stout hearts do not yield to such weakness long. If he could not escape in a boat fashioned by man's hands, why not in one fashioned by God? The early spring freshets of the James were making the river higher every hour. He saw in cautious peeps from the hole where he had hidden great trees from far-off forests, uprooted there by the high water, come plunging down mid-channel like battering rams. He noted that the patrol-boats gave these dangerous monsters a wide berth. If a trunk of a tree were to ram them or if the far-flung branches were to strike them, their next patrol would be at the bottom of the river. On a sandbank not a hundredyards from the boy's lair a big oak had stranded. It lay quite still now, but it evidently would not do so for many hours, for the rising water lapped higher and higher against it. Tom made up his mind that that tree should be his boat—if only it were still there when it was dark enough for him to swim out to it. Through the daylight hours he watched it with lynx eyes, fearing lest it were swept along towards the sea before he could shelter himself in it. And through these daylight hours he grew ever more faint with hunger, until he told himself that he must have food, at any risk, at any cost. Without the strength it would give, he felt he could not possibly swim even the hundred yards that lay between him and the now tossing tree. There is truth in the line:
"Fate cannot harm me; I have dined today."
It is too much to do to face Fate on an empty stomach. Napoleon said that an army traveled on its belly. Men must have food if they are to march and fight.
A Confederate soldier sauntered along the shore and stopped just in front of the boy's hiding-place. He had a rude fish-pole. Either he knew how to fish, or the James River fish were very hungry. A string of a dozen hung from his shoulder. The sight of them was too much for Tom to stand. A raw fish seemed to him the most toothsome morsel in the world. He knew he was courting certain capture, but he was starving. He would pretend to be a Confederate himself. He spoke to the soldier, not out of the fullness of his heart, but out of the emptiness of his stomach.
"I'm hungry," he said, "give a fellow a fish, will you?"
The soldier turned with a start. He was a tall, gaunt man, an East Tennessee mountaineer, who had started to join the Union army when a Confederate conscript-officer seized him and sent him South, under guard, to serve the cause he had meant to fight against. East Tennessee was, as a rule, loyal to the Union. The men from there who were found in the Confederatearmy were like the poor peons who are supposed to "volunteer" in the Mexican army. "I send you fifty volunteers," wrote a Mexican mayor to a Mexican general, "please return me the ropes." Jim Grayson had not been tied up with a rope, but he had had a bayonet behind him, when he was put into the Confederate ranks. He was a man of intelligence and of rather more education than most of his fellow mountaineers. Many of them could not even read and write. Grayson had learned both at a "deestrik skule" and had actually had a year, a precious year, at a "high skule." The last thing he had read before starting to fish that morning had been the printed handbills that had been flung broadcast by the Confederate authorities, announcing the escape of 108 men and one boy from Libby Prison and offering rewards for their recapture. And the first thing he thought as he saw Tom in his hole in the bank was that he was probably the boy of the handbills. He meant to give the fellow a fish, of course, but if he found the fellow was thatboy he also meant to do what he could to help him go where he himself wanted to go, to the Union lines.
"Sholy, I'll give you a fish," he said. "You can have all you want. I'll light a fire and cook some for you."
"I can't wait," gasped Tom, wolf-hunger in his gleaming eyes. "I'm starving."
He tried to reach out for the fish and collapsed in utter weakness. With food at last within his grasp, he was too far gone to take it. Jim Grayson had been very hungry more than once in his thirty years of hard life. He saw that Tom was telling the truth.
"Hush," he whispered, for he had caught sight of some fellow soldiers on the bank, not a hundred feet away. "Hush, sumbuddy's comin'. You mus' take little pieces first. I'll cut one up for you."
He was drawing out his knife from a deep pocket when the soldiers stopped on the bank above their heads and shouted down, asking him to give them some fish too.
"Sholy," laughed Jim. "Here's some for you-uns."
He tossed half a dozen up to them and then sat down at the mouth of the hole that sheltered Tom, thinking to hide him in case the others came down the bank. His back was towards the boy. What was left of his catch hung within two inches of Tom's nose. That was Tom's chance. He tore off a couple of little fish and tore them to bits with his teeth. His first sensation was one of deathly sickness; his next one of returning strength. Grayson twitched the remaining fish into his lap. He knew the boy had already had too much food, for a first meal. Meanwhile he was chatting cheerily with his fellow soldiers, who fortunately did not come down the bank and soon moved off, leaving Jim and Tom alone. Now was the time for explanations.
"Don't be afeard," said Jim, with a kindly smile. "I 'low you be Tom Strong, bean't you? I guess you was in Libby day afore yisterday. I ain't goin' to give you up. I'm Union, I be,ef I do wear Secesh gray. How kin I help you?"
The sense of safety, safety at least for the moment, was too much for Tom. He could not speak.
"Thar, thar," Jim went on, "it's all right. Jes' tell me what I can do. I'll bring you eatins soon ez night comes, but what'll you do then?"
Tom told him what he hoped to do then. It was a wild scheme to float down nearly two hundred miles of river through a hostile country, but yet it offered a chance of success. And if there was a chance of success for the boy, why not for the man?
"Ef so be's ez you'se sot on it," Jim said, at the end of the talk, "I vum I'll run the resk with you. You ain't no ways fit to start off alone. Ef you have to hist that thar tree into the James River, you cudn't a-do it. I kin. 'N ef you wuz all alonst, you mout fall off'n be drownded. We-uns'll go together. 'N then I'll hev a chanst to fight fer the old Union."
Tom was only too glad of the promised company.It was arranged that Jim was to come to him as soon as possible after nightfall, with whatever provisions he could lay his hands upon, and that then they were to get away on the queer craft Providence seemed to have prepared for them, provided only that Providence did not send the big tree swirling southward to the sea before they could reach it. The river was now considerably higher. It was tugging hard at its prey. Sometimes the tree shook with the impact of the rushing waves as if it had decided to let go the sandbank forthwith. If it did go before nightfall, they must try to find another. There were always others in sight, but they were far away in mid-channel, floating swiftly seaward. How could one of these be reached, if their fellow on the sandbank joined them? There was nothing to be done, however, except to wait. Tom's waiting was solaced by the eating of the rest of the fish. Man and boy agreed that the man must loiter there no longer. Making a fire would delay him beyond roll-call. So Jim went and Tom again ate raw fish, tryingto do so slowly, but not making a great success of that. He felt as if he could eat a whale.