Chapter 21

DIMINISHING RATIONS--A DEADLY COLD RAIN--HOVERING OVER PITCH PINE FIRES
--INCREASE ON MORTALITY--A THEORY OF HEALTH.

The rations diminished perceptibly day by day. When we first entered we
each received something over a quart of tolerably good meal, a sweet
potato, a piece of meat about the size of one's two fingers, and
occasionally a spoonful of salt. First the salt disappeared. Then the
sweet potato took unto itself wings and flew away, never to return.
An attempt was ostensibly made to issue us cow-peas instead, and the
first issue was only a quart to a detachment of two hundred and seventy
men. This has two-thirds of a pint to each squad of ninety, and made but
a few spoonfuls for each of the four messes in the squad. When it came
to dividing among the men, the beans had to be counted. Nobody received
enough to pay for cooking, and we were at a loss what to do until
somebody suggested that we play poker for them. This met general
acceptance, and after that, as long as beans were drawn, a large portion
of the day was spent in absorbing games of "bluff" and "draw," at a bean
"ante," and no "limit."

After a number of hours' diligent playing, some lucky or skillful player
would be in possession of all the beans in a mess, a squad, and sometimes
a detachment, and have enough for a good meal.

Next the meal began to diminish in quantity and deteriorate in quality.
It became so exceedingly coarse that the common remark was that the next
step would be to bring us the corn in the shock, and feed it to us like
stock. Then meat followed suit with the rest. The rations decreased in
size, and the number of days that we did not get any, kept constantly
increasing in proportion to the days that we did, until eventually the
meat bade us a final adieu, and joined the sweet potato in that
undiscovered country from whose bourne no ration ever returned.

The fuel and building material in the stockade were speedily exhausted.
The later comers had nothing whatever to build shelter with.

But, after the Spring rains had fairly set in, it seemed that we had not
tasted misery until then. About the middle of March the windows of
heaven opened, and it began a rain like that of the time of Noah. It was
tropical in quantity and persistency, and arctic in temperature. For
dreary hours that lengthened into weary days and nights, and these again
into never-ending weeks, the driving, drenching flood poured down upon
the sodden earth, searching the very marrow of the five thousand hapless
men against whose chilled frames it beat with pitiless monotony, and
soaked the sand bank upon which we lay until it was like a sponge filled
with ice-water. It seems to me now that it must have