Old Winder was merely showing the prisoners how he could rally the guards to oppose an outbreak.
Though the gun had a shell in it, it was merely a signal, and the guards came double-quicking up by regiments, going into position in the rifle pits and the hand-grenade piles.
As we realized what the whole affair meant, we relieved our surcharged feelings with a few general yells of execration upon Rebels generally, and upon those around us particularly, and resumed our occupation of cooking rations, killing lice, and discussing the prospects of exchange and escape.
The rations, like everything else about us, had steadily grown worse.
A bakery was built outside of the Stockade in May and our meal was baked there into loaves about the size of brick.

Each of us got a half of one of these for a day's ration.

This, and occasionally a small slice of salt pork, was call that I received.

I wish the reader would prepare himself an object lesson as to how little life can be supported on for any length of time, by procuring a piece of corn bread the size of an ordinary brickbat, and a thin slice of pork, and then imagine how he would fare, with that as his sole daily ration, for long hungry weeks and months.

Dio Lewis satisfied himself that he could sustain life on sixty cents, a week.