The man’s lower lip quivered. He grasped the oranges and turned his back and started to claw at one of them. Another derelict saw his chance, plucked the other orange from the man and tore at the skin with his teeth. He sucked and bit as the juice ran down his tattered shirt. The train whistle gave a sudden, piercing shriek and the cars bumped together with violent jerks. The third Yankee derelict, a boy still in his teens, opened his eyes. Tim leaned over and handed him the third orange. He took it silently, turned it around and around as if it were a ball of gold--as if spending the wealth would take some thought. He put up his knees to make a shield, and with his thumb and forefinger gently peeled off the first strip of skin ... and the second ... and the third. When the orange was peeled he quartered it and ate deliberately, gasps of pleasure punctuating every gulp. Now the shouts of the guards and the roaring, cracking voice of the captain rang along the platform, and the train moved slowly forward. The door on the right was left half open. Tim watched the shadow of the train as it moved along beside the tracks. It must be past noon. Was it this morning they’d attacked the fort? The train jerked and stopped. With a squeaking and clanking of tortured couplings it started again and gathered speed. Warehouses and sheds flicked by in a blur, like bits of faded glass in a kaleidoscope. As the train left the city by the sea the landscape was flat, dotted with brown-leaved little trees and tall pines with trunks which reached high and bare before they branched into thickly needled clusters. Once when the train slowed down for a moment the face of one of the guards hung upside down from the roof of the car, then disappeared again. As they rattled through the countryside Tim was the only one in the car who stayed awake. The train swayed and rocked across huge swamps filled with trees with swollen roots, their branches dripping with Spanish moss. The pungent odor of stagnant water and rotting wood mixed with the smell in the cattle cars. Tim’s senses dimmed. His head dipped and came up again. He pinched himself, stood up and steadied himself against the door frame of the car. Kautz’s head snapped up. “Have we changed direction?” Tim sat down. “No,” he said. “I judge by the sun that we’re still going roughly northwest.” “How long have we been on the road?” “About half an hour.” “No chance for Beaufort now,” Kautz said. “They’re taking us to Georgia or Columbia. There’s a place called Branchville just ahead. If we fork right, it will be Columbia. I hope that’s what we do. My maps don’t cover much of Georgia. Then there’s the matter of getting help. We can’t get to our lines without some help. They say there are Unionists in North Carolina and Tennessee.” “Then we go north, no matter what.” “It looks that way,” Kautz said. “Get some rest, Lieutenant. I’ve had enough sleep.” CHAPTER EIGHT