Soon as we had protected ourselves from the downpour, Gordon said, “We have got to escape before we get too weak from being underfed and overmarched, and they get us on a train to take us to a German prison. I have bought, begged, and stolen all the food I could get before we left that barbed wire coop where I found you. What have you got?”
“Not much,” I replied; “a piece of bread about as big as my hand. I have been too confounded hungry to save more from the little that I have received.”
He sat thinking for a while, and then said: “Everything will count in an escape. A starving man would be in poor shape for quick and determined action.”
“Yes,” I assented, “a full stomach gives courage!”
He laughed one of his inward chuckles and observed: “I guess that you are a good feeder like myself, and that you are right hungry.”
“Just that,” I agreed; “but I won’t mind that if we can only get away.”
“All right, comrade, we will divide up now,” he decided; “for you may have a chance to get away before I do, or if we escape together we may be separated. It ain’t much, but I am going to whack up even.”
“You are a good fellow,” I said. “Where are you from?” For up to this time I had not asked that question.
“Virginia,” he replied, “and I am proud of it. You are a Yank, I reckon, but I know a white man when I see him. My old dad was a Confederate soldier.”
“And mine,” I said, “was a Union soldier.”