Finally, after what seemed hours to me, one decided to go over for re-enforcements and descended to the boat. Cautiously rising, as the other advanced to the extreme edge of the rock, I saw that his back was toward me and that he was intently watching the progress of the boat, then in mid-stream.
It was possible then for me to have slipped away unnoticed, but I was exasperated beyond endurance. An uncontrollable impulse seized me. Even if I had been sure that the whole Confederate army would have started to his rescue, I could not have helped pushing that man into the water. Moving noiselessly behind him, with the end of my revolver I gave him a sharp punch in the middle of the back. Taken completely off his guard, without a word, but with a wild whirl of arms and legs, he went straight down into the deep water beneath. I have wondered hundreds of times since, what that man thought was the matter with him. If he has lived to read this, he knows now.
CHAPTER XIV.
I returned to where Ned was, and we began retracing our steps.
Although we made frequent attempts to get news, it was not until nearly morning that I learned that our troops had advanced to a point, nearer the place where I had made my way into the enemy's camp, and, consequently, nearer where I was then, but to my left. We immediately changed our route.
From the moment the order had fallen into my hands, my one desire and aim was to get it where the information it contained, together with what other I had gathered, could be put to instant use. Every nerve throbbed with impatience. Every delay was intolerable. Yet that entire ride back was a series of vexatious and dangerous delays. I was beset on every side by dangers, which closed in on me at every point where I tried to evade them. Every mile counted for four in my eagerness to get on. I was obliged, time after time, to retrace my steps and make long detours to avoid running into bodies of skirmishers, to escape the vigilance of pickets, and to baffle the pursuers on our tracks.
Twice that night we stood with our coats drawn tightly over our horses' heads to keep them from making a sound to betray our presence to the enemy, passing so closely below that by stooping, we could have lifted the hats off of their heads with a ramrod.
Shortly after daybreak, as the first rays of of the sun showed over a neighboring hill, I lay in a hollow log, while a man from the column of passing soldiers sat on it to beat the dirt and stones from his remnants of shoes. The dust from the inside of the log, loosened by his pounding, choked me, until in my efforts to keep from coughing, I bit through the sleeve of my coat, and left the print of my teeth on my arm. About six hundred soldiers marched past me, as I watched them from a crevice in the log.