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The comrades were at last reduced to the humiliation of informing the Officer of the Guard of their tunnel and the condition of their friend, and of asking assistance to release him, which was given. The great tunneling tool was the indispensable half-canteen.
Without saying a word to any body, he had employed the time while the Surgeon and Deacon were in conversation in preparing one of his customary gorges after a long, hard march. He had broken up the crackers into a tin-cup of water which sat by his side, while he was frying out pieces of fat pork in a half-canteen. "My goodness, man!" shouted the Deacon, spring ing toward him. "Are you crazy?
A none-too-clean haversack, containing the inevitable sooty quart cup, and even blacker half-canteen, waft slung easily from the shoulder opposite to that on which the blanket rested.
I never understood why all in the pen did not follow our example, and leave the guards watching a forsaken Prison. There was nothing to prevent it. An hour's industrious work with a half-canteen would take any one outside, or if a boy was too lazy to dig his own tunnel, he could have the use of one of the hundred others that had been dug. But escaping was only begun when the Stockade was passed.
The only thing I kin think of is to cut up some basswood chips and fry with this pork. Mebbe we could make 'em soft enough to fill up on." And Shorty gloomily shook out the last crumb from the haversacks into a tin of water to soak, while he fried the grease out of the fragment of pork in his half-canteen.
I had come into prison, as did most other prisoners, absolutely destitute of dishes, or cooking utensils. The well-used, half-canteen frying-pan, the blackened quart cup, and the spoon, which formed the usual kitchen outfit of the cavalryman in the field, were in the haversack on my saddle, and were lost to me when I separated from my horse.
Shorty had fried out the pork in the dingy, black half-canteen, poured the soaked crackers into the sputtering hot grease, and given the mess a little further warming and stirring. Then he pulled the half-canteen from the split stick which served for a handle, set it on the ground, and drew a line through it with his spoon to divide the food fairly into equal portions..
Git out, you infernal brute!" This latt'er remark was addressed to a long-legged, mangy hound that had suddenly appeared from no where, and was nosing around their breakfast with appreciative sniffs. Shorty made a dive for him, but he cleaned out the half-canteen at one comprehensive gulp, and had put a good-sized farm between him and the fire before Shorty reached it.
If you eat that mess you'll be dead before morning." He sprang toward him, snatched the half-canteen from his hand, and threw its contents on the ground. "That stuff's not fit to put into an ostrich's stomach," he said. "Mr. Klegg, you will have to watch this man very carefully." "Can't I have none of it to eat?" said Shorty, dejectedly, with tears of weakness and longing in his eyes.
They were too ill-humored to talk much, but stood around and sipped their hot coffee and munched sodden crackers and fried pork in silence. Pork fried in the morning in a half-canteen, and carried for hours in a dripping haversack, which reduced the crackers to a tasteless mush, is not an appetizing viand; but the hunger of hard exercise in the open air makes it "go."
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