In a word, I was worn out, wet, and hungry; and had become so unstrung, in the accumulated discomforts of the roll from Rebeldom, and the rain of the last stages of my journey, that I could not control my growing nervousness. Having waited a full hour from the third signal-call of the bugle, I jumped desperately to my feet, with a mind made up to hazard everything. Many unlucky fellows, escaping from their captors, have toiled with a wonderful energy, and have failed, when worthy of immediate success, if we rate them by (the war standard) their bravery and coolness. They succumb to fever, and despair finally, but a few moments ere the object of their toils would drop before them. It is ill-advised ever to cast one's hopes adrift as long as life is in us,--an imprudence of which I myself was guilty, and which might have carried me back to thraldom. The dragging anchor may fasten, spell-bound by some fluke-enamored reef, as the vessel seems on the point of striking. I jumped to my feet in desperation, and walked hastily a few rods nearer home. I allowed no after-thought in the premises, but decided to dodge from tree to tree, like the hunting Indian, as long as my present humor impelled me. I know not how far I advanced thus, through the most desperate (but to the reader, whom I commiserate, least interesting) stage of my adventure,--nor anything of my thoughts or emotions, after the hot resolve had taken hold of me. I was in a fever, a mad fever, the evidence of cold, and the handiwork of the past night's rolling-mill, and, I doubt not, was entirely unfitted to evade the enemy with presence of mind or skill. I did not pause till I heard the sound of axes, and the confused noises of a body of men. I then again took the serpent's position upon the earth, after he, like myself, had lost his Eden, and summoned my oft-trusted counsellors, my ears, to their familiar duty of serving for all my senses in one. The sounds were very distinct indeed; I could even hear the men's voices, chopped up by their active tools; and I knew, by the noise of their labors, that they were driving stakes into the ground. It could scarce be the Rebels, I thought, in camp this distance in the rear: it might be our men, I hoped, pushing our advance up the Valley. I drew carefully forward on hands and knees. In a little while I saw a bending figure, with its back to me, holding something that I could not see over a smoking bundle of fagots. There was a poncho about the neck, that covered it down to the ground, and in the morning gray, the figure, the colonnade of tree-trunks, the lazy smoke, a cabinet picture, wore an India-rubber look.