In this way I learned that the three privates had been headed off
and caught within ten minutes. Their destination would naturally be
Andersonville; what further became of them God knows. Their captors passed
the day making a careful canvass of the swamp for me.
When night had fallen I cautiously left my place of concealment, dodged
across the road into the woods and made for the river through the mile of
corn. Such corn! It towered above me like a forest, shutting out all the
starlight except what came from directly overhead. Many of the ears were a
yard out of reach. One who has never seen an Alabama river-bottom
cornfield has not exhausted nature's surprises; nor will he know what
solitude is until he explores one in a moonless night.
I came at last to the river bank with its fringe of trees and willows and
canes. My intention was to swim across, but the current was swift, the
water forbiddingly dark and cold. A mist obscured the other bank. I could
not, indeed, see the water more than a few yards out. It was a hazardous
and horrible undertaking, and I gave it up, following cautiously along the
bank in search of the spot where we had moored the boat. True, it was
hardly likely that the landing was now unguarded, or, if so, that the boat
was still there. Cobb had undoubtedly made for it, having an even more
urgent need than I; but hope springs eternal in the human breast, and
there was a chance that he had been killed before reaching it.
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