His limbs were cold and stiff, but his enforced exercise in crawling soon brought back their flexibility.

He passed between the pickets again, and, when he was safely beyond their hearing, he rose and stretched himself again and again.
The sergeant greatly preferred walking to crawling.

Primitive men might have crawled, but to do so made the modern man's knees uncommonly sore.
So he continued to stretch, to inhale great draughts of air, and to feel proudly that he was a man who walked upright and not a bear or a pig creeping on four legs through the bushes.
He reached his own army not long afterward, and, walking among the thousands of sleeping forms, reached the tree under which Colonel Winchester slept.
"Colonel," he said gently.
The colonel awoke instantly and sat up.

Despite the dusk he recognized Whitley at once.
"Well, sergeant ?" he said.
"I've been clean over the ridge to the rebel camp.

I reached the next creek and lay on the heights just beyond it.