“‘Breakfast!’” was the laughing and probably the truthful rejoinder—“‘breakfast,’ is it? Why we haven’t any for ourselves, how can we give it to you? But cheer up, Yanks! we shall get something to eat on the road, I dare say, if it’s nothing better than raw potatoes or unripe corn.”
The prisoners were immediately formed in line, guarded on either side by a strong detachment of rebel infantry, and put en route for Richmond by one of the plank roads still covered by Lee’s army.
Britomarte, consumed by anxiety for the fate of Justin, ventured to ask an officer of the guard who was marching near her, whether he was still in the field hospital, and what was his state. She spoke in a gentle and winning tone of voice, and the officer addressed happened to be a gentleman.
“‘Colonel Rosenthal?’” he replied. “He is in the ambulance ahead of us, with several other Yankee officers who are slightly wounded, but unable to walk.”
“Is his wound a slight one?”
“I presume it is not a dangerous one, or he would have been left upon the field. We can have no object in capturing an officer who is likely to die before he can be exchanged.”
And here the officer, feeling perhaps that his courtesy had gone far enough in talking to a prisoner, fell back a little out of earshot.
Britomarte felt comforted in the knowledge that Justin’s wound was not dangerous, and that he was on the same road with herself, and would probably be assigned to the same ward of the same prison with herself.
When they had marched about three miles through a wasted and desolated country, they came to a cornfield, where a halt was ordered, and the prisoners were directed to help themselves, and permitted to rest. The corn was not near ripe, the ears when the husks were removed being little bigger than a man’s fore-finger, and the husks still soft; and the ground was wet with the recent heavy rains. Notwithstanding these drawbacks, the famished and fatigued prisoners gladly filled their stomachs with this very green corn, devouring both grain and husks; and afterwards threw their wearied limbs down upon the damp ground—imprudences to be fearfully paid for in the disease and death that afterwards decimated the crowded population of Libby and Belle Isle.
Having eaten and rested in this fatal manner, the order was given to rise and fall in line, and the march was resumed.