CHAPTER XXIV.
APRIL--LONGING TO GET OUT--THE DEATH RATE--THE PLAGUE OF LICE -- THE SO-CALLED HOSPITAL.
April brought sunny skies and balmy weather.

Existence became much more tolerable.

With freedom it would have been enjoyable, even had we been no better fed, clothed and sheltered.

But imprisonment had never seemed so hard to bear--even in the first few weeks--as now.

It was easier to submit to confinement to a limited area, when cold and rain were aiding hunger to benumb the faculties and chill the energies than it was now, when Nature was rousing her slumbering forces to activity, and earth, and air and sky were filled with stimulus to man to imitate her example.
The yearning to be up and doing something-to turn these golden hours to good account for self and country--pressed into heart and brain as the vivifying sap pressed into tree-duct and plant cell, awaking all vegetation to energetic life.
To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness -- to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous, objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.
But to many of our number the aspirations for freedom were not, as with us, the desire for a wider, manlier field of action, so much as an intense longing to get where care and comforts would arrest their swift progress to the shadowy hereafter.