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If I know him, it is only because I have seen him, from afar off, walk the quarter-deck with the other officers, a cigar in his mouth, after a good meal, while we in the forecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten hard-tack." "So you had no reason to hate him?" "None; as little as anybody else."
Well, anyhow, Perkins fed us on spiled salt junk and wormy hard-tack all the way out, and if a feller dast to hint that the same wa'n't precisely what you'd call Parker House fare, why the skipper would knock him down with a marline-spike and the first mate would kick him up and down the deck.
The rebels no longer jeered at and tantalized our boys with inquiries as to when they proposed to start for 'Pine Forest Prison. Jeff Davis, the Confederate President, had only a few days before visited Biggs's army and looked down upon our starving soldiers. Our boys knew this, and would ask if Jeff Devis would like to dine with Gen. Silent on hard-tack?
This officer and his men had to lie for twenty-four hours at a time without shelter from sun or rain, and with nothing to eat but bully beef and hard-tack biscuits. Always their glasses were sweeping the enemy's position, as the officer on a ship's bridge examines the horizon; every little movement of men or cattle was carefully noted.
I always like to eat hard-tack in the dark, then I can't see the worms." To say that I was reassured would be untrue. I admired a man who could mingle business with pleasure, as he did when talking of possible death and worms in hard-tack, but death was never an interesting subject to me.
It contained, among other things, hard-tack biscuits, just the thing for carrying in our pockets, and my aunts in Ontario had sent me some line dried beef and tins of jam. At this time, also, an exceptionally good box came from Miss Ray, of London, England, and home-made candy from Miss Dorothy Taylor, of New Westminster, British Columbia.
One Sunday night he was tracked to a hollow about a mile from camp, where he was met by a gaunt, wild, eccentric-looking girl, who was clearly his daughter. The two proceeded to an old stump concealed under some logs in a thicket, and out of the hollow, of the stump Gillsey fished a lump of salt pork, together with a big bundle of "hard-tack," and a parcel or two of some other kind of provender.
Odell handed over a big jack-knife with the remark that the sergeant might find it useful in cutting bacon or breaking up his hard-tack, so that he could crumb it into his coffee. Percy gave him a ring which he drew from his own finger, and the captain presented him with a twenty-dollar gold piece. Then they shook hands with him once more and saw him ride away.
People talk about guarding riches carefully, and of placing diamonds in a safe place, but no riches were ever guarded as securely as was that piece of hard-tack, and riches never took to themselves wings and new, regretted more than did my last hard-tack. Each bite made it smaller, and finally, the last bite was taken, with a sigh, and nothing remained for me to eat but the halter.
Notwithstanding an unusual headache which lasted all day long, I still had some appetite. Our supper consisted of pemmican pudding with raisins, hard-tack and pea soup, which every one was able to eat, if not to enjoy. That night we slept better, one reason being that the wind did not blow as hard as it had the night before. The weather continued fine.
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