Collins laughed. It wasn’t a mad laugh, but a really-truly good-natured one. “I hope you’ll get through before I go off watch. It’s rather company for me while I’m up, but most likely my friend Jiggins won’t appreciate it.”
“He don’t,” came a sleepy voice. “Not any. Decidedly not. First, down comes tent. Second, hullabalee. Quit it. Quit it.”
“G-guess we will,” says Mark. “Good night.”
They both called good night, friendly-like. It hardly seemed we were prisoners and they were enemy, but all the same that was the fact. I’ve heard about pickets in the Civil War meeting between the lines and exchanging things and being good friends, only to try to shoot each other next morning, and it didn’t seem exactly possible. I couldn’t see how a man you liked could be your enemy and how you could try to beat him, but I do now.
Mark wiggled his finger at us, and we gathered in a little knot around him, with our heads close together.
“We’ll divide into two w-watches,” he stuttered. “Binney and I will w-w-watch first. Two hours. Then Tallow and Plunk. By mornin’ we must have it d-d-dug.”
“Have what dug?”
“The tunnel,” says Mark. “We’re prisoners in Andersonville, hain’t we? D-d-didn’t the rebels capture us, and hain’t we starvin’? I’d like to know if we hain’t. Look out of the window and you c-can see gray-coated guards with m-muskets.”
Here was a surprise. We weren’t shut into a cave by white savages any longer. We didn’t have any jewel out of an idol. We were nothing but Union soldiers in a rebel prison.
“Binney and I will d-dig two hours,” Mark says. “Then we’ll wake you. You d-dig two hours and wake us. It’s got to be d-d-done before daylight.”