"Thank God!" he rejoined; "but how did you live?"
"Look here," I said, pointing to the hole I had drilled.
Therefore, when our tunnel was discovered we thought that the excitement caused by my imprisonment in the ground had led to our detection. But the following morning one of the negroes, while loading the dump cart, informed us that "Massa Lieutenant Silver told Massa Captain all about it." We immediately organized ourselves into a detective force for the purpose of ascertaining the facts, and in a short time became convinced of the truth of this statement. But while we were contriving ways and means to procure a rope, the Confederate authorities intervened and took Silver out of prison, and that is the last we ever saw or heard of him. What price was paid for his treachery we never knew. We realized only the fact that we were again hopeless prisoners.
Prison Life
By this time our clothing was ragged, and it was only by the greatest care that it could be kept even tolerably clean.
Our rations I have before described. Oh, ye epicures, think of it! A pint of corn meal to last you twenty-four hours! As you sit down to your tables, covered with substantial food, imagine it swept away, and in its place a pint of mush, or in lieu of that a corn dodger, but little larger than your two hands, to last you twenty-four hours. There were at this time about fifteen hundred officers confined in this pen, literally starving. It was only a question of time. The result was as certain death, eventually, as it would have been had we been entirely deprived of food.
One day, by some means, a cat got into the yard, and caught a rat. When I saw the feline, she had the rat, and the idea immediately struck me that there was no great difference between a rat and a squirrel. I remembered also the customs of the antipodal Chinese, as related and illustrated in old school geographies, and immediately gave chase. As good fortune would have it, I succeeded in capturing the cat and the rat before my companions in misery had got the idea through their heads that rats were fresh meat. Like a fool, I let the cat go, and commenced skinning the rat.
A hungry officer, looking on, instantly caught the idea, and made for the cat. Good gracious, how foolish I felt! The cat was so much larger than the rat, and although poor and skinny was much the more valuable, for there was more meat there. But I was too late.
I felt fortunate in securing my share of the spoils, and immediately cast about for the best method of serving my dainty dish, so as to make it go the furthest. After long consideration I determined to have a soup. I looked over my stock of peas and found I had about two-thirds of a cupful. Many of them, probably about a half, were wormy. If I threw these away, there would not be enough left, so I concluded that if the worms could stand it I could. I then recollected seeing a beef bone that had been thrown away by some officer who was so fortunate as to have enough money to purchase it and had used it once. I picked it up, and found, on close inspection, that the marrow was still left almost intact. I washed the bone and cracked it. I also found some dried onion peelings, and with these, the peas, the bone, and the rat, I made my soup. Oh, ye gods! How I feasted!
But rats were scarce. We were starving. We must be exchanged, escape, or die. We had lost all hopes of the first. The most of us did not feel prepared for the last, and so a few of us concluded to start another tunnel. This time we decided to limit the membership of the tunneling party to a select few, and these were sworn to secrecy. We started operations under the bunk of Colonel O. H. La Grange,[3] and succeeded in sinking a shaft to a depth of about five feet, whereupon we commenced tunneling.