United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Juvenile fiction
"Whew! Weak as a baby! Water'll make me feel better." The effort of rising
had made him dizzy, and his legs were like soft rubber beneath him. His
knees seemed to bend in all directions under his weight. "Better crawl," he
muttered; then he sank to his hands and knees. He found himself laughing as
he made his way to the water, and it struck him suddenly that he was
delirious. That realization had the effect of clearing his mind instantly.
"Careful about drinking," he cautioned himself. "Just one sip."
Water! He put his face in it, took a mouthful and let some of it trickle
down his throat. He spat the rest out and pushed back from the stream.
Presently he was at the edge again, bathing his face and taking little
sips. Dizziness came over him like a great wave which caught him up and
spun him around. He lay flat and waited for it to pass; then he felt
better.
After a few minutes he arose and commenced to walk back and forth over a
small strip of sand, limbering his muscles. Finally he stripped off the
damp clothes and stood naked in the shelter of the rock, pounding and
chafing his body until it glowed. Gradually he overcame the paralysis of
the cold. "Legs," he said, rubbing and beating them savagely, "when I tell
you to move, don't take five minutes about it. Now, move!" While the legs
did not respond with alacrity, they showed improvement. His nervous system,
which transmitted the orders of his mind to his body, seemed asleep--or
broken like the telegraph lines they had torn down along the route of the
raid. But slowly his nerves awoke, and strength replaced the numbness.
Hunger seized him, and so, remembering the stories he had heard of Indians
tightening their belts during famines, he wound his underdrawers about his
stomach, pulling the legs taut, then tying them. "Poor substitute for a
meal," he mumbled, laughing. At least, he could laugh now, and that counted
for something. He dressed and went to the water for another drink; then he
began to pace slowly along the strip of sand, not daring to sit down and
risk becoming numbed again.
"Better wait here for a few hours," he said. "They'll probably get sick of
watching and seeing nothing but black night. Later I'll go down and see
what that thing is. If it's a flatboat or a raft, I'll try to get across on
that. If it isn't, I'll climb up the bank and get a log. Then I'll try
swimming across holding to it. That'll keep me up if I get a cramp. Lord,
I'm hungry! Guess I'd better not think about it. I'm talking to myself as
though I'd reached my second childhood. Oh, well...." He paused and looked
up toward the embankment. "You thought you'd get me, didn't you, Alf? Not
this Yankee!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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