“Who goes there? Halt!” a low deep voice called, and the four travelers heard the click of two guns.
“We are friends,” Barker replied.
“Pull in here!” the order came from the other craft.
Barker steered toward the shore and found himself alongside of two Confederate dugouts, with two men in each.
The leader flashed a lantern at the travelers.
“Who are you and where are you going?” he demanded. “Get out; we have to search you.”
The searchers found a piece of fresh beef and two loaves of bread and some coffee.
“That’s rich pickings,” the leader commented. “We haven’t had any beef between our teeth for two weeks.
“Come back in the woods a way and we’ll roast some of it, right away. But we can’t build a fire here. The Yanks have a lot of ammunition to waste and they might shoot some Minié balls at our camp-fire.”
Their four captors seemed hungry, for they ate all the bread and meat and drank the coffee as if they had been crossing a desert.