The boys lavished unstinted kindness upon us.  All of the brigade off duty crowded around, offering us blankets, shirts shoes, pantaloons and other articles of clothing and similar things that we were obviously in the greatest need of.  The sick were carried, by hundreds of willing hands, to a sheltered spot, and laid upon good, comfortable beds improvised with leaves and blankets.  A great line of huge, generous fires was built, that every one of us could have plenty of place around them.

By and by a line of wagons came over from Wilmington laden with rations, and they were dispensed to us with what seemed reckless prodigality.  The lid of a box of hard tack would be knocked off, and the contents handed to us as we filed past, with absolute disregard as to quantity.  If a prisoner looked wistful after receiving one handful of crackers, another was handed to him; if his long-famished eyes still lingered as if enchained by the rare display of food, the men who were issuing said: 

“Here, old fellow, there’s plenty of it:  take just as much as you can carry in your arms.”

So it was also with the pickled pork, the coffee, the sugar, etc.  We had been stinted and starved so long that we could not comprehend that there was anywhere actually enough of anything.

The kind-hearted boys who were acting as our hosts began preparing food for the sick, but the Surgeons, who had arrived in the meanwhile, were compelled to repress them, as it was plain that while it was a dangerous experiment to give any of us all we could or would eat, it would never do to give the sick such a temptation to kill themselves, and only a limited amount of food was allowed to be given those who were unable to walk.

Andrews and I hungered for coffee, the delightful fumes of which filled the air and intoxicated our senses.  We procured enough to make our half-gallon bucket full and very strong.

We drank so much of this that Andrews became positively drunk, and fell helplessly into some brush.  I pulled him out and dragged him away to a place where we had made our rude bed.

I was dazed.  I could not comprehend that the long-looked for, often-despaired-of event had actually happened.  I feared that it was one of those tantalizing dreams that had so often haunted my sleep, only to be followed by a wretched awakening.  Then I became seized with a sudden fear lest the Rebel attempt to retake me.  The line of guards around us seemed very slight.  It might be forced in the night, and all of us recaptured.  Shivering at this thought, absurd though it was, I arose from our bed, and taking Andrews with me, crawled two or three hundred yards into a dense undergrowth, where in the event of our lines being forced, we would be overlooked.

CHAPTER LXXIX.