In the meanwhile another happy thought slowly gestated in Davis’s alleged intellect.  How he came to give birth to two ideas with no more than a week between them, puzzled all who knew him, and still more that he survived this extraordinary strain upon the gray matter of the cerebrum.  His new idea was to have driven a heavily-laden mule cart around the inside of the Dead Line at least once a day.  The wheels or the mule’s feet broke through the thin sod covering the tunnels and exposed them.  Our tunnel went with the rest, and those of our crowd who wore shoes had humiliation added to sorrow by being compelled to go in and spade the hole full of dirt.  This put an end to subterranean engineering.

One day one of the boys watched his opportunity, got under the ration wagon, and clinging close to the coupling pole with hands and feet, was carried outside.  He was detected, however, as he came from under the wagon, and brought back.

CHAPTER LIII.

Frank REVERSTOCK’S attempt at escape—­passing off as rebel boy he reaches Griswoldville by rail, and then strikes across the country for Sherman, but is caught within twenty miles of our lines.

One of the shrewdest and nearest successful attempts to escape that came under my notice was that of my friend Sergeant Frank Reverstock, of the Third West Virginia Cavalry, of whom I have before spoken.  Frank, who was quite small, with a smooth boyish face, had converted to his own use a citizen’s coat, belonging to a young boy, a Sutler’s assistant, who had died in Andersonville.  He had made himself a pair of bag pantaloons and a shirt from pieces of meal sacks which he had appropriated from day to day.  He had also the Sutler’s assistant’s shoes, and, to crown all, he wore on his head one of those hideous looking hats of quilted calico which the Rebels had taken to wearing in the lack of felt hats, which they could neither make nor buy.  Altogether Frank looked enough like a Rebel to be dangerous to trust near a country store or a stable full of horses.  When we first arrived in the prison quite a crowd of the Savannahians rushed in to inspect us.  The guards had some difficulty in keeping them and us separate.  While perplexed with this annoyance, one of them saw Frank standing in our crowd, and, touching him with his bayonet, said, with some sharpness: 

“See heah; you must stand back; you musn’t crowd on them prisoners so.”