The lieutenant at the station, by his orders to us and the soldiers, had given us the cue for our behavior. Obviously, we must try to impress the warder with our standing as “military prisoners,” in order to be as comfortable as circumstances permitted.

We proceeded to do this with great ingenuousness. Long arguments and counter-arguments secured us the use of an oil lamp until eight o’clock at night. We went in force to obtain a second blanket, the warder leading the procession.

Our cell was very small, and very dirty. What little space there ought to have been was taken up by stacks of old bicycle tires, which had been confiscated six months before by the Government to relieve the rubber famine in the army.

During the three days we spent in Haltern prison we had no exercise at all. When the weather changed on the second day, and became mild again, just about the time when we should have been close to the frontier if everything had gone well, we sulked with fate more than ever.

The reported arrival of our escort on the evening of the third day excited the warder to such an extent that he wanted us to get up at half-past five the next morning in order to catch a train about eight o’clock. We demurred, of course, and got our way, as usual. Ever since our arrest we had devoted a good deal of time to weighing the probability of being sent to a certain penal prison in Berlin.

“Where are you going to take us?” Wallace and I blurted out simultaneously at two shadowy soldiers in the dark passage of the prison the following morning.

“To where you came from, the Stadtvogtei in Berlin,” one of them replied. To say we felt relieved is putting it mildly.

“We’d better not take it for granted that we are going to stay there, though!” I said, as we tramped through the melting slush to the station.

Several hours later, after a change of trains, Wallace and I had been put temporarily into a compartment with other travelers, until it could be cleared for the exclusive use of ourselves and escort. Slipping into the only two empty seats, we found the burning interest of our fellow-travelers centered upon a man in the naval uniform of the Zeppelin service, who was holding forth about his adventures over England. With extraordinary frankness he was recounting the names of a number of air-ship stations, and the number of Zeppelins usually detailed from each for attacks on Great Britain, and predicting another raid seven days later.

“You give them h—— every time you fly across, don’t you?” asked a civilian, leaning far forward in his seat.

“Can’t say that there is much to boast about of late,” was the unexpected reply. “They’ve plenty of guns, and can shoot quite as well as we. There won’t be many more raids after the one coming off next week.”

As we saw in the German newspapers eight days later the raid took place as predicted, and it was the last air-ship raid for a very long time.

To be in the company of a friend, and to have some money in my pocket, made all the difference between this and my first return from the neighborhood of the Dutch frontier eight months before. We did ourselves quite well on the journey, trying to discount in this way the punishment awaiting us.

At ten o’clock that evening we were welcomed to the Stadtvogtei by several of our old N. C. O.’s with roars of laughter, and conducted to two adjoining criminal cells in “Block 14,” a long way from our friends.

Before my eyes had become quite accustomed to the darkness, my cell door opened again, and our sergeant-major beckoned me to follow him.

“Take your things with you!” he said, and led the way to another cell, farther along the corridor, to separate me from Wallace.

“Come out here! I want to talk to you!” he ordered, when I had dumped down my luggage. “Who had the key?” he shot at me when I stood opposite him in the corridor.

We had expected this, and before our escape had rehearsed our answers to such questions in case one or more of us should be caught.

“Key? What key?” I asked.

“The key to the front door, of course!”

“I don’t know anything about a key.”

“How did you get out, then? How did you open the door?”

“We didn’t open the door. We found it open. It seemed too good an opportunity, so we slipped out as we were. We weren’t prepared at all! But you ought to know all this as well as I do. Haven’t you got your report from Haltern yet?”

His manner changed. He became quite paternal. He wasn’t a bad chap. Anyway, he knew he couldn’t screw anything out of us by turning rough. “Now, come! Don’t try to hoodwink me. We know well enough it was S. who had the key.”

“Well, if you know, why do you ask me?”

“Come on, tell me. It won’t be to your disadvantage! quite the reverse. Just say it was S.”

But of course I did nothing of the sort, and he gave it up.

“We’ll give you a hard time of it, this journey,” he threatened, rather mournfully. “Nothing but the prison food for you, no light of an evening.

“I thought you had shaved off your beard,” he remarked, before turning away. “I notified the police accordingly within the hour of your escape. We had all the stations watched. However did you slip out of Berlin?”

“Oh, rather casually,” I grinned. “Goodnight, Major!”

I felt by no means sprightly and unconcerned just then. I do not like solitary confinement. The stretch in front of me bade fair to exceed in discomfort the first one I had had. Still, we were lucky to be in the Stadtvogtei, near our friends, where, apparently, we were going to stay. With this consolatory reflection I rolled myself into my blankets without undressing. The next day we were going to be de-loused.

S. was arrested in Berlin on the morning following our arrival in prison, and lodged in a cell next to Wallace’s before we went into the yard for our exercise that afternoon. If I am not mistaken, a telephone conversation, during which he had made an appointment with a “friend,” had been listened to. Instead of a friend, a detective met S.

He got the same punishment as we did. At the time of his escape a criminal action had been pending against him. A month after our solitary confinement had come to an end, he was taken to the court one morning by a policeman. A few hours later the policeman turned up alone, considerably the worse for drink, and shedding bitter tears. His charge had decamped through the rear window of a cafÉ where he had been treating his escort. We never saw him again. He was still at liberty in June, 1917, and apparently in Holland.

G. was never captured. For several months rumors reached us that he had been seen here or there in Germany. I have not heard that he has arrived in England.

The German with the English name went to see his mother one day, two months after his disappearance from prison. The police were watching her flat in Berlin, hoping for just that event. Their prey got a term of solitary confinement in our prison, and was then drafted back into the army.

The sixth man, the German stockbroker, followed S. by a few days only. He was kept in prison for a week, and then definitely set at liberty.

On the evening of our second day in cells, we were warned not to go to bed, as our examination was to take place at nine o’clock. A quarter before the hour, S., Wallace, and I were taken down to the ground floor and thoughtfully locked into one cell, so that we were able to make the final arrangements for a consistent and uncontradictory account. This we did after a thorough inspection of the place which convinced us that no trap had been laid for us, and that we could talk freely until we should hear the key in the lock.

The following morning we were told of the comment of Herr Kriegsgerichtsrat Wolf of the Kommandantur, who conducted the examination, upon our respective stories: “Those Englishmen have told me a pack of lies!”

The threat of the sergeant-major had not been an empty one. We were forbidden to have any food apart from the prison rations. Every third day for four weeks these consisted only of bread and water, so far as we were concerned. The parcels arriving for us in the meantime—there were many of them, for Christmas was approaching—were handed to our friends for safekeeping. We were debarred from the use of artificial light in our cells. It being within a month from the shortest day in the year, this was rather “off.” The dawn did not peep through the small windows before nine o’clock, and when we returned from the yard in the afternoon, it was again too dark to read. I think it took the authorities ten days to relent on the question of light. We then got the use of an oil lamp up to eight o’clock every night.

I feel quite sure that we had to thank the lieutenant for the extra punishment of criminal cells, prison food, and no light. He must have been badly rattled about our escaping, and his superiors may have been ungentle with him when he reported it. Naturally, he took it out on us, though to our faces he was quite polite.

The question of food was solved to our complete satisfaction within three days. Our friends knew, of course, that we were going for our exercise every afternoon at three o’clock. From the very beginning they were able to pass us sandwiches and small cans of food.

Not without a little difficulty the N.C.O. in charge of our corridor had been persuaded that “they are allowed to have their newspapers, of course.” His referring the question to higher authority had been discouraged. Why bother busy men with trifles? The newspaper man was one of us. He brought the papers round every morning, when the cell doors were opened for cleaning purposes, and also every afternoon. Frequently he did not exchange a word with us but simply pushed the papers into the blankets of our beds. After he had gone, sandwiches and a beer bottle full of hot tea seemed to have been hatched miraculously among our bed-clothes.

The last and crowning achievement was the ventilator dodge. The ventilator was a square hole in the wall above the door, inclined toward the cell. Just after our dinner time, when the N.C.O. on duty was likely to be otherwise employed, stealthy footsteps might have been heard passing rapidly along the balcony. Very frequently they were inaudible even to our strained ears. The scraping of tin against stone was a signal for us to hurl ourselves toward the door, to catch the Lyle’s syrup can, filled with hot meat and vegetables, or soup, which was sliding through the ventilator.

None of the N.C.O.’s knew about this. They marveled at our physical endurance, which permitted us to retain a flourishing appearance in the face of starvation. Sagely they counseled the taking of medicine, or soap for instance, to make us look weak and pale just before our “solitary” was to terminate. “It’ll never do to be seen with bulging cheeks and bursting seams by anybody in command.”

The chance of seeing old friends, if only for a few seconds every day, the knowledge that I should have their companionship again as soon as our punishment was over, and the fact that I was in familiar surroundings, lessened the depressing effect of my solitary confinement this second time. Wallace, too, kept in fairly good spirits. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. I told Wallace of my decision as soon as I could. When we were again in front of the gate I qualified it: “Never again, Wace, never again—except during the mild seasons, and when the chances are as good as I can make ’em.”

On Christmas Eve, the thirty-fourth day of our punishment, we were liberated, but we had to sleep in the criminal cells for some time afterward.

In time, however, Wallace got the single cell he coveted, and I, after three weeks, again joined my old friends in the big cell. For a fortnight dear old K. was the fourth man. Then he was sent to Ruhleben. Wallace was the fifth member of the mess, a sort of day-boarder.

A week after K. had left us, most of the Englishmen got into trouble. As a punitive measure we were ejected from the large common cells, and C., L., Wallace, and I were lodged as far apart as possible. C. and I were warned to be ready to go to a penitentiary. W. received “solitary” for an indefinite time. Another fortnight, and all our intimate friends were sent back to Ruhleben. Only those members of the English colony who preferred prison to the camp, and four escapers, who had made two attempts, remained in the Stadtvogtei—ten in all. But for Dr. BÉland and one other prisoner, Wallace and I were almost confined to each other’s society.

We had a fairly miserable time of it. The loss of most of our companions had unsettled us. To crown our misery, we were officially informed that we could not hope ever to be returned to camp, or even a camp, as we were considered dangerous to the German Empire.

The announcement ought to have made us feel rather proud. As we knew it to be only one of their specious arguments, it did nothing of the sort. Very soon I left it entirely out of my calculations. Wallace did not, however, but continued to attach importance to it. I must say this, in order to explain my later attitude toward another attempt to escape from prison. In the course of months I grew more and more convinced that we should go back to camp one day. Then would come our chance! I cannot explain my conviction. It was a “hunch.”

Our belief, however, that we should have to wait did not serve as an excuse for inaction. Wallace and I pushed our preparations for the next escape as fast as possible, which was incredibly slow.

Our mainstay was an N.C.O. employed in the office. He was a queer individual, one of the plausible sort. His favorite saying characterized him sufficiently: “Eine Hand waescht die andere [one hand must wash the other].” His saving grace was the entirely frank attitude as to his outlook upon life and its obligations—lack of obligations, in his case. Through him we were able to take one great step forward—to procure maps. In the first part of this volume I have mentioned that the sale of maps to persons without a permit from the General Staff was forbidden in Prussia. According to the statement of our friend he got us the maps we wanted from a “relative” of his, who happened to be a bookseller. “He had these maps in stock and had forgotten to register them.” One or two of them were indeed slightly shop-soiled. They were good maps, covering a part of Germany from Berlin, and including it to the Dutch frontier. Their price—well, it made my eyes water. They were worth it, though. For a prisoner of war the collection must have been unique. We each had a compass.

Chiefly on my advocacy we postponed the start again and again. The chances of getting away from prison were, to my mind, infinitesimally small. One attempt by another party early in May was cleverly nipped in the bud. Our last attempt had not encouraged me to trust to luck, but I clung to my belief in a return to Ruhleben, which appeared as unlikely as ever, on the face of things. Once, however, we were ready to go, but almost at the last minute the help we had reckoned upon was not forthcoming.

Among the men who had tried their luck in May, 1917, were two who, very pluckily, had started to walk the whole distance between Ruhleben and the Dutch border. Unsuitable maps, in the first place, had been their undoing. They both spoke German—one like a native, the other not so well. They do not wish to be known, so, for the purpose of this narrative I will call them Kent and Tynsdale.

This, penciled on a slip of paper and addressed to Wallace and me, was given to us by Tynsdale soon after his arrival. The brief phrase did not overstate their merits.

Tynsdale was small, wiry, and, at times, very reticent; Kent, tall, bulky, and—not reticent. In due course we came to live in a large cell together. They were as eager as were Wallace and I for a new venture, but they were quite determined not to break prison. The information they gave us about Ruhleben from the escaper’s point of view strengthened my prejudices against this course.

“Let’s wait a little longer. The weather will be favorable until October. If our hopes should prove vain, we can always make a desperate sortie. Before it comes to that, something may happen.” This was the final conclusion we arrived at.

Something did happen—several things, in fact.

The first was an unexpected visit from a representative of the Dutch Legation in Berlin. It found us well prepared with an impressive protest against being kept in prison any longer. The same evening I confirmed the interview in two identical and rather lengthy letters, to which almost all of us, including the five men then in “solitary,” subscribed their signatures.

One of these letters was delivered to the Dutch Minister by hand twenty-four hours after it had left the Stadtvogtei in the pocket of a person entirely unconnected with the postal service, military or otherwise. Consequently the German censor had no chance of perusing it. The other passed through the ordinary channels until it was, presumably, decently buried in the censor’s waste-basket.

A little later, German newspapers mentioned the fact that negotiations about the treatment of prisoners of war had taken place at The Hague, and that an agreement had been come to which was now awaiting ratification by the governments of Great Britain and Germany.

It so happened that at this time we had unusual facilities for the secret purchase of English newspapers. In a copy of the “Daily Telegraph” we read that the agreement had been ratified. Another week passed and a copy of the same paper contained paragraphs concerning civilian prisoners of war. The report of a speech in the House of Lords by Lord Newton, I believe, either in the same paper or in some other bought at the same time, helped us to interpret these paragraphs so far as they seemed to refer to cases like ours. At any rate, it gave us a talking-point in favor of an interpretation as we should have liked it, and announced further that the agreement had become operative in England on August 1, 1917, already a few days past.

A memorial in the shape of two letters addressed to the Dutch Minister in Berlin was the immediate result of reading these articles. The letters went the same way as the former ones, and drew a good deal of good-natured chaff upon my head about “writing-sickness,” “Secretary for Foreign Affairs,” and charges to be made for every signature I came to collect in future.

Tynsdale and Kent had not been away from camp more than three months. They knew all the ins and outs of it, including a good deal of information not usually shouted from the house-tops. Wallace and I, after an absence of thirty and seventeen months respectively, were comparative strangers to Ruhleben.

“Will you two come with Wallace and me?” I asked our new friends one day. “I should like to have your help in getting out of camp,” I explained. “Later on I can probably be as useful to you.” And I referred to my record as an escaper, to my equipment, and to my maps. They assented. They knew from previous discussions that I was not entirely in sympathy with their proposed route; or, rather, I had explained to them what I thought to be the advantages of a route I had in mind, which were confirmed by their own information.

As it appeared desirable that each member of the proposed expedition should be fully equipped as far as essentials were concerned, we set to work feverishly making tracings of parts of our maps. We had to finish this work while still in prison, because it would not be possible to secure sufficient privacy in Ruhleben for this kind of thing. Fortunately I had anticipated something like this months before, and possessed some colored inks and drawing-pens. Tracing-paper I manufactured from thin, strong white paper, which I treated with olive-oil and benzene. We finished three copies before we left prison, the original making the fourth.

On the 23rd of August, 1917, a strong guard of policemen escorted a highly elated batch of British civilian prisoners through a part of Berlin, then by rail to Spandau, and again, per pedes apostolorum, to Ruhleben camp. We were nineteen in all.

Four Britishers stayed behind voluntarily; five more were in “solitary,” having recently tried to escape and failed. Among the latter was our old friend L.

CHAPTER XX
RUHLEBEN AGAIN

We arrived in Ruhleben shortly before noon, and were kept waiting for a long time just inside the gates, for the good of our souls. But then, the under dogs are always kept waiting somewhere for the good of their souls. So that was all right.

When our names had been called a number of times, and some supposedly witty remarks had been made by a sergeant, whose reputation in camp was no better than it should be, we were marched off to our barracks (No. 14), a wooden one, and the last one toward the eastern end of the camp, next to the “Tea House.”

Part of it was divided off by a solid partition and enclosed by a separate wire fence. This was the punishment place of the camp, called “the Bird Cage.”

The other and larger part was empty; had, in fact, been cleared that morning for our reception, much to the disgust of the former inhabitants, who had been very comfortable in their home-made cubicles and corners. Now the place was absolutely bare, except for the litter of broken shelves and partitions on the floor.

We were still contemplating it doubtfully when we received our orders: “Beds will arrive presently. They are to be placed in two rows in the center of the barracks. Nothing shall be hung on the walls, or the beams and supports. No partitions or corners will be allowed. The barracks is to be kept bare, so that the inmates can be seen at any hour of the night. The electric light is to be kept burning all night and must not be obscured in any way.” Thus ran the gist of them.

We were pretty wroth. “Call that a return to the privileges and liberties of an ordinary prisoner of war?” rang our complaint.

At night our indignation broke forth again. We had to be in bed by 10 P.M. At 10:45 a patrol of three privates and an N.C.O. came to count us, tramping noisily round and round in their ammunition boots, over the bare wooden floor. Not much to complain about in that. But they repeated it six times during the night, and that was distinctly “off.” For many of us, sleep, even during the intervals, was difficult on account of the glaring brightness of the electric light.

Our barracks captain protested strongly the captain of the camp. So did virtually every member of the barracks privately, and gradually this nuisance abated. The six times we were disturbed dwindled down to four, then to three; and sometimes we were inspected only twice, when the patrol considerately kept outside and counted us through the windows.

Our reception in Ruhleben was rather flattering. I do not know how many new acquaintances I made during the first fortnight; several hundred, I should think. Now and again, inevitably, I met a man who immediately told me what he would have done “if I had been in your shoes and got as far as you. They would never have brought me back alive!”

I had only to look at my barracks companions to see that we bore the prison stamp, and the remarks of my friends did not give me a chance to forget my own appearance. Compared with the Ruhlebenites proper, we looked more like animated corpses than living beings. Our faces were ashen gray, even our lips had paled. The skin around our eyes remained drawn and puckered, until the eyes had accustomed themselves again to the strong light of the open sky.

Prison life had taken its toll of our vitality, particularly among the long-timers. For a few hours the fresh air acted upon us like heady wine, and during the following days it simply sapped our strength.

Kent and Tynsdale were in comparatively good condition. Wallace was bad, but had an appetite, and recovered quickly. I was the worst of the four. My physical condition did not make me a desirable companion for an arduous venture, and since we found it impossible to “make a move” at once, as we had intended, I deliberately set myself to repairing the damage as quickly as I could. I took plenty of rest, and, avoiding any but the gentlest exercise, grew gradually stronger. About the middle of the second week I started some very mild training.

Yet I still remained nervous and distraught; more so than my companions, who showed signs of the same trouble. It was, however, merely the nervousness of inaction, for I was eager to start. The camp was not even as desirable as we had pictured it. Barracks No. 14 was far less comfortable in every respect than the barracks we had called our own before we made our first attempt. Everything was dirty, and we missed our accustomed privacy. The two daily roll-calls, which took place on the playing-field at seven o’clock in the morning and again twelve hours later, were an unmitigated nuisance.

What, then, could be more tempting than to woo Fortune again? If she proved fickle, we would go back to the Stadtvogtei. Under the new arrangement the punishment for a “simple escape” by a military prisoner was to be a fortnight’s imprisonment. At first we interpreted the paragraph as applying to civilian prisoners also. Now we had become more doubtful about it. Our friends, who had been sent to prison after the 1st of August, had more than doubly exceeded the stipulated time before we left the camp. What more likely than that the Germans would treat the agreement as another “scrap of paper” and send us to comfortable winter quarters, if we were caught?

We had intended to start within a few days of our arrival in camp. This we found impossible, but for two reasons the delay was fortunate. It permitted us to recruit our health and get accustomed to the open air, and it brought us nearer to the time of the new moon in the middle of September.

About a week after our arrival, Wallace decided not to come with us. For months he had had a plan of his own, which recommended itself neither to Tynsdale, Kent, nor me. He rather liked the idea of playing a lone hand, and his strong desire to see a little more of his friends in Ruhleben finally decided him. Tynsdale, Kent, and I “carried on.”

Our plans were simple enough, once we had got out of camp. First of all we intended to make for Berlin. From the capital a railway journey of about twenty hours (including a break of seven) was to take us to a small town in the northwestern part of Germany, sixty kilometers from the Dutch frontier as the crow flies. From there we intended to walk, the distance by road being rather more than seventy miles. One considerable river would have to be crossed, we did not quite know how, but we were all fairly powerful swimmers.

Tynsdale’s knowledge of German was not good enough to make it possible for him to travel on the railway without a companion to do the talking. Kent, his particular chum, was more than willing to take the risk of being Tynsdale’s courier, and proposed that he and his friend should always travel in one compartment, while I traveled alone in another. This arrangement was obviously unfair. Granted the wisdom of traveling in two parties, Kent would be taking the greater risk all the time. We finally agreed that Tynsdale was to be alternately in Kent’s and my charge.

We had maps and compasses. I had a water-bottle and a knapsack, and Kent obtained another knapsack in camp. A third and two water-bottles would have to be bought en route.

Ordinary wearing apparel, dictated by the railway journey, we had; also sufficient underclothes for cold weather, and two thick overcoats between us. Two oilsilks of mine would protect my friends on rainy days. I insisted on carrying a heavy naval oilskin, sufficiently large to make a decent ground-cloth for the three of us. If possible, we intended carrying food for ten days; cabin-biscuits, dripping, compressed beef, chocolate, cocoa-and-milk powder, sugar, and raisins.

A friend of mine, whom I have mentioned several times in this narrative, spoke to me one morning. “Take,” he began oracularly and with a twinkle in his eye, “a pound of real Scotch oatmeal, a pound of dripping, and a pound of sugar. Mix well. Roll out the dough until it is about three quarters of an inch thick, and bake it in a hot oven for four hours. The result will resemble shortbread. It is immensely sustaining. That it will crumble easily into a coarse powder need concern you only in so far as you will have to carry it suitably wrapped. Handkerchiefs will do. At a pinch, a cake per day, smaller than your hand, will keep you going indefinitely. And,” he added readily, “if you’ll give me the material, I’ll do them for you. But mind you chew ’em well when you eat ’em. It’ll take some time to masticate them properly. You must do that, to get the full benefit of the oatmeal.”

The square cakes, a little smaller than the palm of a man’s hand, which he handed to us in a parcel a few days after, were rather heavy for their size. We thought of carrying ten per man, reduced the biscuits to two per day, and discarded meat and cocoa altogether.

To carry all this during the railway journey, we had a cheap German portmanteau, which I had bought for this purpose in prison, and two small leather hand-bags. As to money, I was fairly well supplied. My companions got hold of smaller sums, and between us we had enough even for an emergency.

In the meantime we managed to be seen together as little as possible. Escaping was in the air. Two attempts from other barracks failed during the first fortnight. What was worse for us, three men from our barracks took the bit in their teeth and went one night. They were in cells again before dawn.

The camp authorities were wide awake and slowly strengthened the guards. More police dogs were reported to be arriving almost daily. (I doubt whether these reports were correct.) N.C.O.’s patrolled the sentries incessantly, or concealed themselves and watched places for hours where they thought fugitives would pass. As long as we knew beforehand where these places were this did not matter much, but it certainly increased my nervousness and impatience. I believe I was a sore trial to my friends with my incessant, irrational pleading for “something to be done.”

Kent and Tynsdale had made their first escape from camp by simply bribing the sentry at the gate and one other, and walking out. We had hoped to repeat this performance. Both these sentries were still in camp on guard-duty. Immediately after our arrival we sounded them as to their willingness to earn a few hundred marks easily. We did not do this ourselves, but made use of the good offices of a friend of Tynsdale’s, who had extensive dealings of a different nature with the two German soldiers and who could bring a good deal of pressure to bear on them. To appreciate the importance of the help he rendered us, it must be remembered that no soldier was allowed to talk with a prisoner. It would have been difficult for us to establish direct communication with the two soldiers. Not only was the punishment barracks least suited for anything like secret meetings, but its inmates were kept under more continuous surveillance than the rest of the interned.

The two soldiers were quite willing to do business, but maintained that the most they could do was to take an entirely passive part. The old, easy way was out of the question. The camp authorities were too suspicious of the existence of irregularities among the guards and of the danger of fresh attempts now that the “gang” was back in camp. “If we get certain posts, we won’t challenge during a specified time,” was what the soldiers gave us to understand.

The situation became worse when one of these soldiers was suddenly sent to the front. His manifold activities for the benefit of the prisoners—payment being made with English food—had at last got him into trouble. The other man, his associate in most of the deals, went about expecting the same fate and became quite intractable for a few days. As nothing happened to him, he gradually assumed his normal state of mind.

We intended to leave camp at the western corner. This was farther removed from the escapers’ barracks and nearest to Spandau. Our route was to lead us through part of Spandau.

A box in Barracks No. 8 was our headquarters. There our equipment was kept, and there we intended to dress.

The windows in the loft of Barracks No. 4 gave upon the enclosure of the Visitors’ Barracks. They were about two feet square and covered with wire netting which could easily be removed. As the loft of this barracks was divided into a large number of small cubicles, only the inhabitants of one cubicle needed to be taken into our confidence to any extent. They undertook with alacrity to have everything ready at a few hour’s notice, including the rope we should have to descend by. Once in the enclosure of the Visitors’ Barracks we should have only one wire fence to climb to get into the space between this and the outer wooden fence. The wire fences consisted of strong chicken-wire with barbed-wire strands along the top. They were about eight feet high. The wooden fence extended only a little way. The rest had been destroyed by a fire which had occurred in camp in June of that year. Along part of the way we should be partially protected from the view of the sentries by the wooden fence and the structures about us.

There was a sunken path which was well lighted by electricity, and well guarded. The sentries walked on top of a bank and were able to see most of the space between the wire and the wooden fence. Post No. 2 was at the corner of the wooden fence, where the path met the road which ran along the front of the camp, and extended along the path for about seventy yards. Then came Post No. 3. The end of the wooden fence was nearer to the road than to the other end of Post No. 2.

The attempt was to be made when our man was on duty. He was to be deaf and blind. This would leave us free to concentrate our attention upon Post No. 3.

“Next Sunday!” Kent told me at length on a Friday. “Are you ready?”

“Good heavens, man, I’ve been ready these two weeks past!” Then I began to ruminate: “Sunday? That’s rather awkward!”

“It is, but do you think we ought to delay it on that account?”

“No, certainly not! Does Tynsdale realize the state of affairs?”

“Haven’t discussed them with him. If we two come to an agreement, he’ll be sure to take the same view.”

There were two objections to the day proposed—one because it was a Sunday, which made getting into Berlin rather risky, the other because it happened to be the 16th of September, which made getting away from the capital additionally difficult.

As to Sunday, food was scarce in Germany, especially in the capital, and illegal trading was rife. Every Sunday the inhabitants flocked into the country in multitudes to buy farm produce from the peasants direct, offering prices much higher than those fixed by law. To stop this, the police frequently detained passengers who were traveling into town on the trunk and local railways, in the Underground, and on trams, and inspected their baggage. A search of our bags and bundles would mean immediate arrest.

Secondly, at 2 A.M. on the 17th of September—the Monday after the day we had chosen—summer time was to change to astronomical time. Consequently, trains all over the country would leave independently of the printed timetables during several hours before and after the hands of the clocks were moved back. Thus we could not be sure whether or not we could catch the train we had selected.

We came to the conclusion that we should have to risk it. But could we not minimize the first, the greater of the two risks, by reducing the amount of our luggage? “We’ll take only one of the small hand-bags, discard these and these articles, and carry food for six days only,” we decided.

The amount of food which we finally took with us worked out per man per day as follows: a bar of chocolate, two small cabin-biscuits with dripping, one cake of the famous “escapers’ shortbread,” two or three pieces of sugar, and half a dozen raisins. A tin of Horlick’s malted milk tablets was carried in reserve, and also a small flask of brandy.

CHAPTER XXI
THE DAY

On the 16th of September, 1917, our man was on guard at Post No. 2 from 7 till 9 P.M. and again four hours later. He had instructions to expect something between 8 and 9 o’clock, or, failing that, during his next shift. The latter part of his instructions had been an afterthought. It was part and parcel of our plan to catch the train from the Lehrter Bahnhof in Berlin at 11:47 P.M. It would have inconvenienced us very considerably if we had had to delay our departure. If everything went satisfactorily as far as the sentry was concerned, he was to receive his reward the following morning, no matter what happened to us.

That evening we were to be counted for the last time that season at 7 o’clock. The roll-call took place on the playing-field in the center of the race-course. This was outside the strongly protected camp proper, and it was beginning to be too dark, at the hour mentioned, to let the prisoners outside of any of the three wire fences surrounding it.

As soon as the ranks broke after passing back into the inner camp enclosure, we made our way casually and separately to Barracks No. 8. The box we entered was quite deserted. Two of its inhabitants could be seen talking near one of the entrances to the barracks, from where they could hail any chance visitor who might intend to look them up in their quarters. We dressed as rapidly as possible, yet were somewhat later in getting ready than we had expected to be. Our baggage had been taken to the selected cubicle in the loft of Barracks No. 4 during the afternoon by men not specially interested in our venture.

The cubicle of our friends was in darkness. The open window opposite the wood-framed pasteboard door admitted a faint rose-gray after-glow from the western sky. The confined space seemed crowded with dimly seen forms who whispered that all was ready.

Somewhat perversely, I thought, Tynsdale suddenly demanded that I accompany him “to have a look at the gate.” It was a double gate, plentifully protected by barbed wire, which gave entrance to the enclosure of the Visitors’ Barracks during the weekly half-hour when visitors were allowed to see the prisoners. Without heeding my protest in the least he disappeared, and I had to follow after.

“I think we had better climb over the gate instead of dropping from the window,” was all he answered to my questions about his unexpected vagary. To my somewhat heated opposition against any alteration in our oft-and well-considered course of action he turned a deaf ear.

“I’m going to climb over here,” he announced truculently after a brief inspection, and almost immediately began to suit the action to his words. As little attention as he had paid to me, he paid less to some twenty or thirty men, mostly sailors, who were lounging near the spot. And then a very fine thing happened. As soon as these men saw what Tynsdale was up to, and without any perceptible hesitancy, they began walking carelessly about and around him, shielding his activities in this fashion more effectively than they could have done by any other means. As for myself, I hurried back to the loft.

“Come on,” I whispered breathlessly to Kent, “quick! Tynsdale is climbing over the gate. He’s stark, staring mad.” I grasped the rope, squeezed through the window, and was in such a hurry to get down that I let the rope slide through my fingers. Naturally a good deal of skin stuck to the rope. I landed with a bump and had just time to roll out of the way as Kent’s two hundred pounds came crashing after me. We got up, both with smarting palms, while overcoats seemed to be raining from the window above. We managed to catch the two grips as they fell. During all this time we could hear Tynsdale making a terrific din among the wires. As soon as he had negotiated the first two obstacles he started to overcome the third fence, while Kent and I carried our paraphernalia to the foot of it. Then Kent went over the top, and I heaved the things over to Tynsdale, who stood ready to receive them. Kent was a heavy man, and he appeared to me more than a little awkward at that moment. How he ever managed to get over the fence without bringing the whole guard about our ears I cannot yet understand. My own performance probably sounded as bad to them.

As I let go my last hold, a stage-whisper from the window about fifteen yards away, reached our ears, “Drop, you fools, drop!” The men in the loft could see the sentries over the top of the intervening low wooden barracks. To judge from the suppressed excitement in their voices one of the sentries must have been coming our way with much determination.

A patch of weeds on our left was the only cover near us. Grabbing the second portmanteau, which was still lying near the fence, I dived for it headlong and fell down beside Kent. Tynsdale, who had gone forward, beat a hasty retreat toward us and disappeared from view on Kent’s other side.

There we lay, out of breath, and dangerously near the lower end. I did not dare to raise my head even, and then after a long, long interval, the suppressed voices sounded again, straight from heaven: “All clear. Go ahead.”

We reached the end of the wooden fence. The enemy sentry was nowhere to be seen. A few quick, long steps carried us across the sunken path, into the potato-field and beyond the circle of the glaring electric lights. Kent was in the lead. Suddenly he dropped, and we followed his example just as the gate of the soldiers’ barracks, perhaps fifty yards on our left, clicked open. Then it slammed shut.

Potato-vines offer very good cover for a man in a prone position. It was dark, too. But, lying there, I had the uncomfortable feeling that some large and conspicuous part of my anatomy must be sticking out into plain view. I flattened myself as much as possible and vainly tried to decrease my bulk by general muscular contraction, but seemed to swell to ever greater dimensions. When I lifted my head after some time I saw two round gray-and-black objects above the potatoes. These were my companions. We had all given way to the same impulse at the same time. Nothing menacing was to be seen. Silently we got to our feet and shortly after gained the road.

From now on we were to play the parts of harmless German civilians, and consequently the need for silence had passed. “What made that gate open and slam?” I asked Kent. “I didn’t take the time to look, myself.”

“Two soldiers came out of the barracks and went toward camp.”

“Well, it’s all right, I suppose. You know this road. You lead.”

Kent turned and walked off, closely followed by Tynsdale and me. We had not taken many steps when I suddenly saw the end of a cigarette glow up in the dark ahead of us. Kent hesitated, stopped, and whispered to us.

“Oh, go on!” I answered irritably. “We can’t stop here.” Kent walked on and past two soldiers standing by the roadside. They stepped forward, barring our way. I made as if to pass them, but they did not move aside to make room.

“What are you doing here?” one of them asked.

“What do you want?” I countered.

“We want to know who you are and where you come from.”

“What right have you to stop us in this fashion and ask us questions?”

“What do you mean by stopping anybody on a public road?” Kent’s voice amplified my question. I had not noticed that he had turned and joined our group. “This is a public road, you know.”

Tynsdale, who could not speak German very well, kept discreetly behind Kent and me and felt, no doubt, as if he were intruding.

“This isn’t an ordinary public road. There is an English prison camp down that way. Our instructions are to keep an eye on the traffic along here, what there is of it.” It was always the same man who was doing the talking. His statement sounded a little odd to me since neither he nor his companion was conspicuously armed, and neither one wore a helmet, two signs that they were not on duty. “Unless you have a passport or can establish your identity by some other means you will have to come with us, so we can make sure who you are.”

“No, I haven’t a passport,” I said slowly. “You don’t always require one just walking back and forth from your work.” I was trying to think of the right thing to do or to say, and particularly whether to risk about ten years in a penitentiary, if the only move which seemed open to us should fail.

“Oh, anything will do,” the soldier continued, “an envelop addressed to you, for example.”

I had made up my mind. “Right. I’ll give you something. Here’s my passport,” and I handed him a one-hundred-mark bill from my pocket-book.

The soldier looked at the bill, then at me. He poked his companion in the ribs with his elbow and showed it to him.

“See what that fellow calls a passport? Is that all right?”

“That’s all right,” said the other.

“Boy, boy! You are some guys, you are! Say, are you only going for a night in Berlin, or are you not coming back?”

“That is as it may be,” I told him.

“Say, what barracks are you fellows from?”

“You needn’t worry about that yet. You’ll hear all about that in the morning.”

“Oh, all right! But you beat it now, quick!” and they turned to go. But I had an idea of making further use of them.

“Say,” I called, “we want to get into Spandau. Is it likely that we shall be stopped? Are there many sentries about there? Which is the best road to take?”

“Plenty. Walk straight on and then turn to your left across the railway.” They went away.

When I looked about for the grip, which I had put down in order to get at my pocket-book, I found it gone. Kent had walked on. Tynsdale was still hovering close to me.

“Where’s that portmanteau?” I asked him excitedly. “I put it down here.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “Didn’t see it at all. Where did you put it down?”

For a few seconds we looked underneath the bushes without success. “A man who will take a bribe will steal,” was a not unnatural conclusion to come to.

“Wait a minute,” I flung over my shoulder, and started in hot pursuit after the two soldiers. It was the larger of our two grips that was missing, containing the most important part of our equipment.

“What the hell do you want now?” is the way they received me. Neither one of them was carrying anything.

“Oh, nothing,” I replied airily. Being unable to catch them in the act I dared not take the risk of accusing them. “I thought I had lost something,” I said.

The one who spoke muttered something threateningly. They were naturally very anxious to get rid of us now.

“Come along,” I said to Tynsdale, resignedly, when I had rejoined him. “We’ve got to make the best of it.” A little farther down the road Kent was waiting for us in the shadow of a bush, with both grips. He had picked mine up when he started to walk ahead and had caused me a few bad moments. Here, we brushed ourselves with our hands and handkerchiefs. A short walk through wide, deserted streets, most of them flanked by factory buildings, proved pleasantly unexciting.

It was still early in the evening, but the wide thoroughfare of Spandau, not far from the railway station, was deserted, except for a small group of people between two tall light-standards, who, like us, were waiting for a tram to Berlin. The arc-lights fizzed slightly now and again, and cast fleeting purple shadows over the island, which served as a platform for the tram-cars.

We three stood a little apart, occasionally exchanging a word or two in German. We were hot with excitement and exertion. I was carrying the large portmanteau and an overcoat over my arm. Kent had the other bag, Tynsdale an oilsilk wrapped in his overcoat.

The first tram was crowded, but a second, immediately behind, was only moderately full. As prearranged, we got on the driver’s platform, the darkest part of the vehicle, and the least sought after.

For the first quarter of an hour of our ride, tram-lines and street ran parallel to, but on the other side of, the railway, which passed along the front of the camp. The eastern gate of Ruhleben camp was at one point not more than two hundred yards from a stopping-place, where officers and men of the camp-guard usually boarded the trams when going to town. Hardly half that distance away a sentry patrolled.

The possibility of an untoward meeting at this point kept us on edge. If somebody from Ruhleben had accidentally entered our car, we intended to take no notice of it, unless he came to the front platform. What we should have done in that case, I do not know. Our resourcefulness was, fortunately, not put to the test.

The front platform became fairly crowded. I succeeded in manoeuvering Tynsdale into a corner, and planted myself in front of him, thus cutting him off from any likelihood of being spoken to by any of the passengers. Kent could take care of himself, better perhaps than I, for he was readier with his tongue. Half-way to Berlin, in front of West End Station, Charlottenburg, where eighteen months ago my railway journey had started, the track was blocked by a car which had broken down. It took half an hour to shunt it upon a siding and clear the line. We were not pressed for time, and remained in our places, almost the only passengers who did so.

Our immediate destination was the Wilhelms Platz in Berlin. From there we had to get to the Lehrter Station. Without local knowledge ourselves, we had gathered an idea of how to do it. Kent was to be guide and acting manager, but he kept consulting me, who was well content to follow.

Broadway at the most crowded hour of the day is hardly so packed as were, that night, the far wider streets of the German capital. It seemed as if the whole population of Berlin were wandering more or less aimlessly about. Two solid streams of people moved in opposite directions on the pavements, and spilled over the curb into the roadway. In a way, this was favorable to us. Except by accident, it would have been impossible to find us. On the other hand, it made it difficult for a party of three to proceed by tram or omnibus. At every stopping-place of these public conveyances a free fight seemed to be going on for the places inside them; not the rush we are accustomed to complain about in London, but a scramble in which brute force triumphed unchecked by any trivial regard for decent manners and the rights of others.

After we had alighted and threaded our way across the Wilhelms Platz, Kent found a station of the Underground.

“Take a first-class ticket for yourself. I’ll buy two,” were his instructions, whispered in German.

I bought a third-class one. I did not want to. I was merely too funky to ask for first-class. It meant the pronunciation of an extra word. I could have spoken it as correctly as any German, but suppose there was no first-class on the Underground! They’d get suspicious! It was very silly of me. Mistake No. 1.

Naturally, the third-class was crowded. It is not the custom in Germany to be polite to the gentler sex. I knew it as well as anybody. But when an elderly woman, looking very tired, was clinging to a strap just in front of me, I was on my feet before I knew what I was doing. She declined the proffered seat in confusion. To repair my “break,” I hastily sat down again, my ears burning. Mistake No. 2. Kent looked daggers at me from the opposite seat, and as soon as he had a chance I got my wigging.

At the Leipziger Platz the throng was thicker, if anything. There was not the faintest chance of getting into a train.

“There are some droshkies down there,” said Kent, pulling my arm to attract my attention.

“Get one!” I answered curtly.

The marvelous thing was that the driver accepted us as fares. The luggage we were carrying, and our destination, Lehrter Bahnhof, did the trick, I believe.

The drive through the Sieges Allee, past the greater atrocity of the “Iron Hindenburg,” and farther through deserted residential streets, was splendid. We lit cigarettes, and I regained my coolness. I wanted it. Grimly I reflected that two mistakes were quite enough for one day.

We found the booking-hall of the Lehrter Station crowded at eleven o’clock. Kent and I deposited our luggage and took our places in the long queue in front of the booking-office.

“What time the eleven-forty-seven for Hanover to-night?” I asked a porter who was passing me.

“Twelve-forty-seven, but to-night only.”

We had almost two hours to get through, somehow and somewhere. Not at the station, that was certain.

“Follow Tynsdale and me. Keep as far in the rear as possible, and don’t lose us,” I told Kent.

The Lehrter Station is situated in the northwestern part of Berlin. There seemed no decent cafÉs near at hand in which we could spend the time and get a drink. As we were very thirsty, however, we found a low-class place not very far off in which we ordered a glass of beer each. When the waitress brought the drink she told us ungraciously that the cafÉ was going to be closed in a few minutes. Hastily we emptied our glasses, glad to get out of the place with as little delay as possible. Three German privates were eyeing us from a table close to ours much too attentively for our liking.

Outside, the previous formation was resumed. Sauntering very slowly along, I led back past the station again, along the river Spree, then through the empty streets of a residential neighborhood, and finally, by accident, into the Friedrich Strasse with its dense throng of people. On the way I kept up a semblance of conversation with Tynsdale. I would not go into a cafÉ again, so near closing time, thinking we were safest among the crowd, which was moving quite as leisurely as we were. Tynsdale was content to follow me, and Kent had no chance of pressing his objections.

More slowly, if possible, we sauntered back to the station, where we arrived with fifty minutes to spare. Having got our luggage, we spent the time in the waiting-room and restaurant, over beer, coffee, and lemonade. German cigarettes, bought at the counter, enabled us to enjoy a soothing smoke.

“Shall we go out on the platform now?” asked Kent twenty minutes before train time.

“No; wait,” I answered. Later I explained that, since our absence was presumably known in camp by that time, and since there was a chance that passports might be inspected at a terminus, I thought it would be better if we rushed to the platform as late-comers.

If I recollect rightly, Kent was to chaperon Tynsdale as far as Hanover. At the last moment I requested that he should come into my compartment. I should have been worried about my friends if I had traveled alone in comparative security, and was sure of feeling happier with Tynsdale by my side. Rightly or wrongly, I imagined I could take care of him just as well as Kent.

The train was a stopping one, and was crowded to the last seat when we tried to board it.

“Can we get into a first-class compartment?” I asked a busy official. “There is no room in the second.”

“Third and second only on this train,” he answered, and then shoved Tynsdale and me into an already crowded carriage, from which he ejected a soldier who had a third-class ticket.

“Sit down,” I said peremptorily to Tynsdale, who obeyed. I stood in the gangway, leaning against the window. Kent disappeared into another compartment.

Then we were off, past Ruhleben camp to Spandau as the first stop. It appeared a foregone conclusion that our absence was known in camp by now. We feared that the train might be searched in Spandau. I took some comfort from its crowded state. When another crush of people packed themselves into the little standing room left, I blessed the scarcity of trains which caused the crowding. Information has since reached me that the camp authorities did not discover our escape until roll-call the next morning.

Within the next hour the compartment emptied, until we were left alone, but for a German N.C.O., who, fat as a pig, was breathing stertorously in his sleep. Tynsdale was slumbering behind his overcoat. I followed his example for short spells, the uneasy feeling that I had something or somebody to take care of following me into confused dreams.

At the Hanover main station our luggage went into the cloak-room and we ourselves into the waiting-room and restaurant to have a cup of coffee.

I knew Hanover fairly well, and was to conduct my friends to the Eilenriede, a huge public park encircling a quarter of the town. The greater part of it is really a densely timbered forest, where we could spend the morning, or part of it, in safety. Tynsdale and I in front, Kent in the rear, we wended our way thither, as much as possible through back streets.

It was a typical September morning, promising a hot day. The life of the town was beginning to stir: people were going to work, milkmen were making their rounds, a belated farmer’s cart rattled over the cobbles now and again; from the main thoroughfares came the buzzing of trolleys and the clanging of bells.

In the park Kent closed up, and we walked abreast for a time, talking freely in German. We felt tired, and finally sat down in a secluded spot, surrounded by thick timber and undergrowth. At long intervals early-morning ramblers passed us, solitary old gentlemen, and several couples who most decidedly felt no craving for further company, and consequently took more notice of us than the old gentlemen. Near by, two women were gathering wood and loading it into dilapidated “prams.” They were usually out of sight, but we heard them all the time, breaking the dry sticks into convenient lengths.

Gradually the sun sucked up the mists, but the haze of an autumn day remained. Slanting shafts of light struck through the foliage, which sent off scintillating reflections, where it moved in a very slight breeze, while its shadows seemed to dance merrily on the ground. A full chorus of birds warbled and twittered in praise of the warmth of the waning summer. The hum of insects was in the air. A butterfly winged past at intervals, and behind our seat a colony of ants was busily engaged.

The leaves had begun to fall. They covered the ground between the trees, but the branches themselves only showed the dark-green foliage of summer.

Our surroundings moved me intensely. I had not seen in this way a green thing in seventeen months of prison life. I had not been among green trees for over three years. The seat, hard as it was, was comfortable to our tired bodies. We felt lazy, and when we had discussed the night’s events, and outlined the next move, the talk languished. We were hungry, too. Two biscuits apiece and a rather generous allowance of chocolate tasted good.

Kent told us that he had immediately found a seat in the train, the night before. His compartment had emptied sooner than ours, and he had chatted through most of the journey with his only traveling companion, a lieutenant. I do not know how many lies he told him.

At ten o’clock we walked back to the town. The heat was oppressive by now. A circuitous route, to waste time, brought us into the main street, the Georg Strasse. In an arcade I entered a shop for sporting-equipment, leaving Tynsdale to wait outside with Kent, and obtained two military water-bottles and an extremely shoddy knapsack at an exorbitant price. Kent bought cigars. A strong clasp-knife was added to my equipment. At a tram-crossing I inquired from a policeman about the cars to Hainholz. I intended to repeat the trick Wallace and I had made use of ten months before, and avoid leaving from the main station. It was too early to obtain a meal in a restaurant then—about eleven o’clock—so we went into the famous KafÉ Kroepke, where we sat at different tables in the order of our entrance.

On the way back from the station, carrying our luggage and walking in the usual order, I caught sight of a very detective-like individual crossing the road toward us. He fell in behind Tynsdale and me, between us and Kent. As well as I could I watched him, but we did not seem to interest him. While we stood waiting for the tram, Kent closed up, and I nearly choked with rage. I thought his instructions, “Do as we do, but keep apart,” covered everything. Now he was asking me questions. But, after all, it was only leveling up the score of the previous night against me.

At Hainholz I went to the ticket-window and asked for two second-class tickets to Bremen. Kent had asked for one ten minutes before, and had been told to wait.

“Are you two traveling together?” asked the booking clerk.

“No, no. I’m traveling with my friend,” and I waved an uncertain hand toward Tynsdale, who looked on with an impassive face from a seat behind us.

“Do I understand you to want a pass for two, and you,” turning to Kent, who was standing beside me, “for one?”

Kent signified his assent.

“I want two tickets to Bremen. Two!” said I.

“You see,” explained the man, “I have no tickets to Bremen in stock. I’ve got to write out passes for you. It’ll save work, if two are traveling together. I can make out a joint pass for two then.” Thank heaven it was nothing else!

We rushed to the platform only just in time—and waited for half an hour for the overdue train, another one of the parliamentary variety.

Tynsdale and I got the last two seats in a compartment occupied by a well-dressed and well-groomed man, four flappers with school-maps, and a very pretty woman.

I felt much relieved when the train started. Another part of our venture had come to an end! We had now left the direct route toward Holland, the route by which the authorities would expect us to travel. Cloppenburg, which was the ultimate objective of our railway journey, lay in a straight line not so many miles to the west of us. Yet we were going to spend another seven and a half hours in getting there, and had to change the direction of our flight twice.

It was, therefore, with considerable composure that I sat listening to the chatter of the flappers and the occasional snores of the man, and watching the landscape through the window.

It stretched flat to the horizon, dancing in the heat haze. Toward four o’clock, white clouds made their appearance in the azure sky, followed presently by gray ones. When we drew into Bremen Station, where we had to wait forty minutes for another train, due to start at half-past five, a heavy shower was drumming on the glass roof.

Our traveling companions remained with us all the way. About half an hour before we reached our destination, the pretty lady next to me began to make ready for her arrival. Her hair, an abundance of it, required a lot of patting and pulling about, which did not alter its appearance in any way to the male eye. She sat forward in her seat, and with her back straight and her arms raised, she assumed the captivating pose of a woman putting the last deft touches to her toilet. Although anxious not to appear rude, I tried to lose none of her movements, which were the more charming to me as I had not seen a woman of her class close to me for over three years. Her rounded, well-modeled arms and shoulders showed dimly through the thin blouse. Fortunately, she was half turning her back toward me and my companion, and we could gaze our fill.

“Wasn’t she pretty!” were Tynsdale’s first words in the station restaurant after four hours of silence.

“Wasn’t she!”

We were having a cup of coffee, sociably sitting together at the same table. I went out to buy the three tickets and have a wash. To my astonishment, there was real soap for use, not merely to look at as a curiosity, in the station lavatory. I made a remark about this extraordinary fact to the attendant, who told me quite frankly that he made it a point to have real soap, and that it was profitable for him to buy it at eighteen marks per pound in bulk. This implied illicit trading, and the outspokenness of his statement was illustrative of the general evasion of the strict trading laws and price limits.

The journey to Oldenburg, our next stopping-place, took half an hour only, but was the most trying part of our escape. We were on the main line to an important naval and air-ship center, Wilhelmshaven, and although we did not approach it within fifty miles, the fact never left my mind. Furthermore, the compartment Tynsdale and I were in was so crowded that we had at first to stand. As soon as a seat became vacant, Tynsdale slipped into it. It was next the window on the other side of the car, happily away from an inquisitive and extremely talkative individual, who, having been rebuffed by an officer and earned the hostile glare of a man in naval uniform, lapsed for a short time only into comparative silence. Before he opened his sluice-gates again, I had sat down beside Tynsdale, covertly watching the dangerous lunatic, as I called him, and sending up heartfelt prayers that my friend would stick to reading the book which he held in his hand as usual. He would not do so, however, but kept looking out of the window, giving an opportunity every time, I felt, for our conversational friend to open fire.

The scheduled thirty-five minutes would not come to an end. Even when my watch told me that they were past, the train still kept stopping at small stations and in the open country, and jogging on again after a short halt. My anxiety was great, but at last I had my reward when we arrived at Oldenburg.

What is it that makes one place feel “safe” and another menacing? In most cases it is difficult to explain. The comfortable assurance of security I had here, I put down to the absence of crowds in the station, and to the fact that a booking-office between the platforms permitted the purchase of new tickets without the necessity of passing through the gates with their hostile guard of soldiers. Eighteen months earlier the shutters in front of the windows of a similar intermediate office at Dortmund Station, had caused me to reflect that the authorities wanted to force all passengers to come under the scrutiny of the guard and the ever-present detectives. Now the face of the clerk on the other side of the glass appeared a good omen. We were not in Prussia, by the way, but in the Duchy of Oldenburg.

Our train was due to leave in twenty minutes from the time of our belated arrival. After a short wait on the platform it was shunted in. We all three bundled into the same compartment, but took seats in different corners. We did not carry through very carefully this show of not belonging together, as nobody joined us. Kent bought two small baskets of fruit from a vendor who passed along the train, and we were sufficiently hungry to start munching their contents at once.

During the first part of this last stretch of an hour and a half we remained alone. Dusk was rapidly changing into total darkness. Soon it became impossible to distinguish the names of the feebly lighted stations. I checked them carefully from the open time-table beside me, lest we should alight too soon or too late.

At 8:30 we arrived at Cloppenburg. The first and probably the most dangerous part of our venture lay behind us.

CHAPTER XXII
ORDER OF MARCH

My two companions had entrusted themselves to my leadership for the tramp to the frontier. My first business was to pilot them out of town from the right side, if possible, and, what was more difficult, by the most favorable road. I thought it, under the circumstances, about as hard a task as could be set me, at the very beginning. If so slight an undertaking as ours may be spoken of in military terms, I should compare it to a rearguard action and the successful withdrawal from touch with the enemy’s advance scouts.

It was a very dark night. Only occasional stars glimmered through the canopy of clouds. I knew nothing of the town, except what little information could be gleaned from a motor-map, scale 1 to 300,000. The time-table had taught us that we were to arrive at one station, and that a train was to start from another about half an hour later. A number of people were likely to change from the one to the other. To follow them, as if we were of the same mind, would give us a start off and carry us beyond the eyes of the railway officials. After that I should have to do the best I could, without the help of either a compass, which I could not consult, or the stars, which were not in evidence.

As long as we were likely to meet people the order of march was to be: I in the van, Tynsdale and Kent in the rear, as far behind as possible without losing touch.

Most of the people who had left the station with us kept on the same road, thus proving our calculation correct. We walked in their rear, I carrying the portmanteau, which rapidly grew heavy. Big trees lined the streets throughout; their shadows made it impossible to see more than a few steps ahead. I followed behind the other travelers more by sound than by sight. My companions had to keep within arm’s length of me. There seemed to be a maze of streets, and, trusting to luck, I turned into one of them. We found ourselves alone. At another corner, instinct bade me take a sharp turn to the right. Then the streets lost their character as such. Houses seemed to be irregularly dotted about on bare ground underneath towering trees. Again they drew together into a street, or a semblance of one. Here my friends closed up, and I gave the leaden-weighted portmanteau to Kent. A furtive peep at the compass heartened me a little. It seemed as if open country appeared in front, but it was difficult to tell. Near a lamp, three girls passed us, arm in arm. Inquisitively they turned their heads.

The road ascended and curved, fields were on each side, the silhouette of a house in front; to the left, perhaps fifty yards away, the ragged outlines of a wood.

“We’re in the open,” I announced, “and on a favorable road, I think. Let’s go into that wood and pack our knapsacks. What time is it?”

“Ten minutes past nine,” answered Kent, who carried the luminous wrist-watch.

It was only a thin belt of trees in whose shelter we arranged our loads, and discarded the white collars and shirts we were wearing. From the southward came the barking of a dog and the noise of railway traffic. The dog was not far away. Whether it was because of his bark, or because of a light we saw, we sensed a house in the same direction, near enough to call for careful handling of our electric torches. It was not necessary to warn my friends. They were squatting cautiously close to the ground, never rising above a sitting posture, and screening the light with their bodies. It was I who received a mild rebuke from the very cautious Kent. I do not think my action deserved it, but I was so elated that its chastening effect was, perhaps, good. Not forgetting the fact that we had yet to pass two strongly guarded lines—the river Ems and the Dutch frontier—I felt, nevertheless, that our task was more than half accomplished.

When we had finished, I bade my friends lie down, one on each side of me, so that I might use the flashlight for a thorough scrutiny of the map. I recognized the road on our right without difficulty. It was a second-class one, and divided the angle between the two highroads. As to direction it was entirely favorable; as to safety it was preferable to a first-class highway. A brook was marked on the map as flowing across it not very far away, and this was of almost greater importance than anything else, for we had not been able to fill our water-bottles. We were thirsty, but not uncomfortably so as yet. My experiences had taught me the paramount necessity of always having sufficient water. How to get it began to occupy a great part of my thoughts from now on.

“It’s quite obvious,” I remarked. “We’ll follow this road through Vahren village. We’ll find water at about twelve o’clock. At about one-thirty we’ll turn at right angles into this road, which will lead us to water again, and then into the northern high-road.” I went in detail over the prospective night’s march. “And now,” I finished, putting map and torch into my pocket and getting up, “good luck to us! Come on. I’ll be in front till further orders.”

Once on the road, starting at a good pace, we turned our faces toward the west, toward Holland, and toward freedom.

When I recall the events of my first two escapes, I am astonished at the clearness with which every minute’s happenings are imprinted on my mind. I need only close my eyes to see the sights, hear the sounds, and, in a measure, be under the influence of the same emotions which I then experienced.

It is somewhat different with my recollections of this last escape. For the greater part they are as bright as they can be. But there are blurred patches in the pictures of my memory. A number of them seem wholly obliterated.

Soon after everything was over we wrote down the course of events. These notes and our maps are helping me now in my efforts to recall the next five days. But even at the time of fixing our recollections with pencil and paper, while they were not yet a week old, our joint efforts proved inadequate in filling a blank of about six hours in the second night of our walk.

It was a glorious sensation to feel a road under our feet, and to have the open country about us. It was about the time of the new moon. The rain had ceased hours before, but the clouds were still obscuring the stars, and the night was exceedingly dark.

In due course the first village was indicated by a few scattered houses—the outposts, as it were. We slowed up.

A dense mass of black shadow lay in front of us. Not a light was to be seen anywhere. Slowly we advanced, until the faint outlines of a roof here and a gable there detached themselves from the overshadowing groups of enormous trees, which embowered the village completely in dimly seen masses of foliage. With stealthy steps, almost groping, we entered the blackness, which seemed to close behind us. Nothing broke the silence except the rattle of a chain once or twice, and the muffled lowing of a cow. By contrast it seemed light when we emerged into the open again.

“We ought to get to water in half an hour now. Look out for it. It’ll be a small stream. We might miss it,” I counseled. Kent was close behind me with Tynsdale.

Half an hour—three-quarters of an hour—but no water. Instead we entered another village, not marked on the map. Among the houses a road branched off to the north. I was awfully thirsty. My tongue lay heavy in my mouth.

“Let’s try to cut off that corner,” said I. “The other branch of the brook may exist in reality. I think this road will curve round to the northwest or west, and get us there quicker. It’s not marked on the map.”

My friends were always willing to follow my suggestion, and we tried it.

The road curved west, then west-by-south.

“Stop a moment! We had better go back to the old route. I don’t like this very much now.”

Again Tynsdale and Kent followed obediently.

This was the first instance of many in which I did not allow myself to be guided by my instinct, as I should have done if I had been alone. I felt so strongly my responsibility toward my friends that I disliked taking any move I could not fully explain by cold reasoning. Instinct is generally unreasonable. Besides, it does sometimes lead one astray. In our case it might compel us to walk across-country, and the cross-country stretches in this part of Germany looked forbidding on the map, being mostly marked as heather, moors, and swamps.

Having regained the former road, I discovered after a while that it was turning too much to the south. I was still musing about this when we entered a smooth, broad, first-class highway.

“Let’s rest for a spell,” I suggested.

We sat down, with our feet in the ditch, close to the trunk of one of the enormous trees lining the roadside.

“Do you know where we are?” asked Kent, after I had consulted the map and sat blinking again to accustom my eyes to the night.

“Of course I do,” I snorted irritably. “We’re on that beastly southern highway I wanted to avoid. I wish I hadn’t been such a fool as to abandon the other road. I don’t know how we got here. The map shows no connecting road down to here at all. The only damage done, as far as I can see, is that we have increased our distance from water. We can hit the by-road leading north, if we follow the chaussÉe. Oh, I’m thirsty! I’ll try a cigarette.” We all lit up.

Three abreast we started again.

“There’s a sign-post,” said Kent, whose eyes were exceptionally good.

“To Molbergen,” it read, pointing along a straight by-road at right angles to our direction.

“This is the one we are looking for,” I announced. “How do you feel, Tynsdale?”

“I can hardly keep my eyes open,” he made answer.

“Well, we’ll soon get water,” I said, to console him.

“I’ll walk ahead as a pace-maker,” suggested Kent.

“Good!” It appeared a splendid idea. “I’ll take the rear. Tynsdale had better follow you close, to get the benefit of your pace-making.”

Kent led with a swinging pace along the sandy, rutted road for an hour and a half. The country stretched flat on each hand, often broken by patches of forest. A telephone line on our left irritated me with the monotony of its ever-recurring, never-ending succession of poles. I had the old sensation of walking up-hill. We found no water. Then we came to the northern highway, into which we swung by a turn to the left.

By this time my tongue was sticky. I had the feeling of a crust having formed at the corners of my mouth. Neither Tynsdale nor Kent felt thirst so acutely. A little way down the chaussÉe I stopped.

“There is a house over there. I’ll see whether or not there’s a well. They must have a water-supply,” I remarked.

Tynsdale and Kent waited in the road at first, but soon followed me. The solitary building stood about fifty paces from it, and a well with windlass and protecting roof faced its western side. No pail was attached to the wire rope, but an old cast-iron pot lay on the ground beside the stone coping. This we tied to the end of the rope with pieces of string, and, turning the handle of the windlass cautiously, let it down. When it came up, filled with very cold, wonderful water, was there ever anything so delicious? We drank in turns, not once, but many times; then filled our water-bottles, and drank most of the remaining liquid.

We passed through another village in the course of the remaining hours. Behind it we came to a large brook, not marked on the map, which rushed gurgling underneath the stone bridge. I insisted upon another drink and a replenishment of our water-bottles.

“I can’t keep awake any longer,” complained Tynsdale a little later.

“I suppose we had better take a rest, then. Don’t you think so, Kent? We’ll just turn off the road and lie down underneath that hedge there. Only for half an hour, mind. We must find decent cover before dawn.” This was at half-past three.

We spread the oilskins as a ground-cloth and rolled ourselves into our overcoats. I wanted to keep awake, but fell asleep as promptly as the other two, not to awaken until an hour afterward.

“Get up, quick! No time to lose. Get up!” I aroused my friends. Not more than about half an hour was left us in which to find good cover. Already the air struck my cheek with the damp chill of dawn. It “smelled” morning.

We packed in haste, and hurried along the road. Once, and again, we turned into a by-road, which seemed to be leading toward a wood. But scattered trees near the horizon produce in the dark the impression of a forest, since only their outlines can be seen against the sky. We found each time that we had been lured into a fruitless quest.

The eastern horizon was graying when we came to a small spinney at a cross-roads.

“This will have to do,” I said, a little doubtfully.

Pressing toward the heart of the thicket, and using my torch to avoid stabbing branches, I discovered a noose in a bush for trapping birds. I showed it to my friends. “This doesn’t look like security, does it?”

In the densest part of the spinney we halted.

“Wait a few minutes, will you? I’ll see whether or not I can find something better near at hand.” With that I left them. I explored our immediate surroundings without success, located a house in the vicinity, and finally had some difficulty in finding my companions. When I thought I was near them I whistled softly, to be answered by Kent, not three feet away. My friends had prepared a camp, and I lay down by them on the oilskins. The two overcoats we spread over us, and the oilsilks on top. The knapsacks served as pillows, and almost in a moment we were asleep.

CHAPTER XXIII
THE ROAD THROUGH THE NIGHT

We woke up in full daylight, which revealed the scantiness of our cover. By merely raising our heads we could see people and vehicles pass along the roads, and the sound of voices and the creaking of wheels were at intervals very distinct all day. That it is very much more difficult to see into a thicket than from it, was a consolation with which we reassured ourselves repeatedly. I do not think the others felt any more nervous than did I, who thought we were safe as long as we kept our recumbent position. We hardly moved during the sixteen hours, I believe.

We ate our rations in two instalments and with interruptions slept a good deal. We never got as much sleep again in one day while in Germany. I doubt that we got as much until all was over.

Occasional gleams of sunshine during the morning became ever rarer as the afternoon wore on. Gray clouds threatened rain more determinedly as the day grew old, but a strong wind which was soughing in the branches overhead kept it off until evening, when it started with a small preparatory shower or two.

When the light began to fail, we packed up and sat about in our raincoats, talking in undertones and listening to the pat-pat-pat of occasional drops among the leaves. The roads had become deserted as darkness fell.

At 9:30 we started our second night’s progress.

Two considerations had determined my theoretical choice of route for the night. One was the desirability of keeping well to the north of an artillery practice ground on the hither side of the river Ems, the other the question of water.

In order to carry my intentions into effect, we intended to leave the first-class highway for a communication road which was to branch off in a village about an hour’s walk ahead. It was to lead in a tolerably straight line across a desolate stretch of country of no small dimensions.

Soon after our start, the drizzle of rain turned into a regular downpour which drummed noisily on oilskins and hats. A sign-post with the distance from Cloppenburg gave us our exact position, and enabled us to calculate the extent of ground covered on the previous night. We made it 28 kilometers (17½ miles).

Again we looked in vain for the brook which we had expected to find during the first hour. The water we carried was getting low, and I was anxious to have the bottles full again, and to get a good drink. In the first village we came to, the gurgling of a rain-spout was too tempting, and in spite of the protests of my friends I drank copiously and filled my bottle, whereupon they followed my example. It was just as well that they did so, for more than twenty-four hours were to elapse before we had another, and less enjoyable, opportunity of slaking our thirst with more than a mouthful at a time from our bottles, which was all we permitted ourselves between sources.

To our very circumscribed vision, the village, and all those we had passed through so far, and would have to traverse yet, were of the same type. At night their streets, ill defined among the loosely scattered farm buildings, were wrapped in impenetrable blackness, and both safe and difficult for men in our position to follow. Two steps to one side, and one’s companions were lost to sight. To distinguish between the road and a by-lane leading nowhere was frequently impossible, without the help of the swiftly stabbing, instantly extinguished cone of light from our torches.

In this and the next village we came to I would not risk taking any of the likely-looking by-roads, without some extra assurance, such as a sign-post would have given me, of finding the right turning. Sign-posts were conspicuous by their absence. During the whole night we found only two, neither of them any good for the purpose in hand, and they were the last we saw for the rest of the journey.

Consequently we continued on the first-class highway, which was easy to follow, until it joined the southern road again in the village of Werfte. This was about half-past one in the morning.

The high-road from now on continued due west through flat, monotonous, and swampy country. As fast as we could we pushed along, Kent making pace with his usual swinging gait, hour after hour. For our objective we had two small lakes, shown on the map as touching the road on its northern side. They were to supply us with water before we went into hiding. Close behind them, a single third-class road, impossible to mistake, was to start us north on the third evening on our quest for our proper latitude, and in avoidance of the northern end of the artillery ground, by this time not more than eight or nine miles in front of us.

The second sign-post we saw that night not long before dawn enabled us to fix our position with accuracy, but a little later we came to the conclusion that our maps had played us false again. The lakes were nowhere in sight, though we ought to have passed or reached them. Since we had left Werfte the track of the steam-tram had accompanied the road on our right, and a screen of bushes and woods had interfered with our view to the north. Now we burst through them, bent on finding a hiding-place away from the road.

“There’s the lake!” shouted Kent, pointing over the black expanse to where, like a shield of dull silver, the surface of the water glimmered three quarters of a mile to the north-northeast. It was too late to approach it then. To the north of us, a small thicket, looking as usual many times its actual size, invited us to rest. We advanced toward it over springy, heather-covered ground and across several wire fences.

On the banks of a deep ditch, scantily sheltered by bushes, young trees, some furze and heather, we made camp. It was a fairly safe place, for the reason that, as we saw later, there was no house within a third of a mile—at the moment we thought there was no dwelling within several miles—nor any tilled land.

Our resting-place on the bank of the ditch had been selected from the standpoint of concealment only. It was most uncomfortable to lie on. Before the sun had cleared the horizon, we were awake again.

The rain had ceased after midnight, and now a boisterous wind was dispersing the last clouds which hurried across the sky from the northeast, tinted rosily on their under side. The air was extraordinarily clear. Its refreshing coolness quickly drove the last cloying remnants of sleep from our brains. The sun rose. Far away, to the east, the church spire of Werfte stood sharply defined above the smudge of green which indicated the village.

I crept away from my friends during the morning to glean some information, if possible, by a look from the other side of the thicket, toward the west. The pale blue of the sky above, speckled by hurrying clouds, the flat rim of the sky-line, broken by two distant villages, the line of the road by which we had come, continuing toward the large village of Soegel, and a solitary farm, seven hundred yards away, made up the landscape. While I lay watching behind a furze bush a country cart crept across my circle of vision. Between me and the invisible road a number of cattle sounded unmelodius bells with every hasty movement of their heads.

“We needn’t look for the road to-night. It’s there, to the west,” I announced, rejoining my friends. “We can break camp early and get water as soon as dusk is setting in. After that we’ll go northwesterly across country, turn north on the road,” etc. I outlined the next night’s march. Our plans were very elaborate, but came to naught.

“All right,” my companions nodded assent. “Now have something to eat.” They were munching away at their rations. For a time we chatted in excellent spirits.

“There is a much better place to lie in just behind us. It looks safe enough,” suggested Tynsdale, worming his way back to us through the bushes after a short absence.

“Yes; let’s shift! I saw it, too,” seconded Kent.

So we shifted, and soon lay comfortably ensconced in the lee of some bushes. Here we were bothered by mosquitoes, for the air was still, but we felt warm, and managed to snatch some sleep during the remainder of the day.

At 8:30 P.M. we were plodding through the heather toward the lake, which glimmered at the bottom of a shallow depression. We were licking our lips in anticipation of the drink we were going to have. Two hundred yards from the shore the ground became marshy, then a quagmire. We strung out in line abreast in order to find a firm path to the water’s edge, but had to desist in the face of impossibilities.

Rain had been threatening for the last four hours, but was still holding off, when we got on to the road, and proceeded north. We had walked steadily for an hour or so. The night was pitch-dark. Black and flat swamp-land extended all round to the indistinct horizon. Here and there the lighter streaks of ditches, full of foul, stagnant water, were ruled across the black expanse. The wires of a telephone line on our right hummed in the wind.

We were walking as best we could—I a little in front on the right, Tynsdale on the other side of the road, Kent almost treading on my heels. The ribbon of turf underneath my feet seemed fairly broad.

A sudden splash behind me caused me to stop and whirl round. A white face at my feet heaved itself, as it seemed, out of the ground, and Kent scrambled back on to the road, squirting water from every seam.

“Did you know you were walking within half an inch of a ditch? How is it you didn’t fall in?” he demanded savagely of me.

“Are you hurt?” I counter-questioned anxiously.

“Not a bit! The water was just deep enough to cover me entirely, except my knapsack. That seems dry,” he answered, feeling himself all over. “I’ve lost my hat, though.”

“Anything else?”

“No, I don’t think so. Never mind the old hat. I hardly ever wear it.”

“Come on, then! Keep moving, or you’ll catch a chill.”

After about one hour and a half, during which a number of paths had demonstrated the unreliability of our maps in this locality, none of them being marked, a cart road on our left proved too much of a temptation for me.

“Are you fellows game,” I asked, “to follow me over uncharted ground? I feel certain I can do better by compass alone, and probably save us several miles.”

“Don’t make speeches, old man; get along. We’ll follow.”

I was fortunate in being able to justify this move. Three quarters of an hour afterward we struck a highway a mile in front of the village of Spahn, our nearest objective. Pleased with myself, I announced a clear gain of about three miles. Here we took it easy for about twenty minutes, sitting in the road, with our feet in the ditch. Kent and Tynsdale had a draft from the brandy flask, and we all had something to eat.

“This is the fifth shrine we’ve seen since Monday night. I always thought northern Germany was entirely Protestant,” Kent remarked when our scouting for water at the entrance of a settlement had led us around the structure.

“We’d much prefer a well, anyway,” was our unanimous opinion.

We simply had to have water. After searching among the houses we finally found a rain-tub half full of it. It contained a fair number of insect larvÆ, to judge from the tiny, soft bodies passing over our tongues while we drank, but we continued our march with heavy water-bottles.

The name of the village, in black letters on a white board, dispelled any possible doubt as to our position. A white post close to this sign elicited my angry comment:

“I’d like to know how many of these beastly poles with the direction boards missing we’ve seen so far! Do the Boches think they can make it more difficult for an invading army or something, by knocking their sign-posts to pieces?”

For the next hour and a half our way lay through dense forest. The straight, very wide clearing which served as a road was ankle-deep in sand. As it yielded and gave way under the backward pressure of our hurrying feet, it produced the nightmarish sensation of striving hopelessly in a breathless flight against a retarding force. Thousands of fireflies dotted the roadside with points of greenish light, or drew curves of phosphorescence in the air. A heavy shower urged us to assume the sweltering protection of our raincoats. Several times I checked the direction of the road at its beginning, and even borrowed Tynsdale’s compass for the purpose, as the needle of mine seemed to move sluggishly, but I noticed nothing wrong.

The next village, which we entered soon after midnight, looked quite different from what we had expected. It was of considerable size. The streets were in darkness, although electric street lamps were installed. But the yellow squares of numerous lighted windows told of many inhabitants not yet in bed. Near the church we turned into a road on our right. Among the last houses I checked the road’s direction.

“It isn’t the road we want,” was my conclusion. “Leading too directly north. We’d better go back and look for the right one. What d’you think?”

“D’you think it safe?”

“Well, we haven’t much time to spare. But the streets are dark enough. We might risk it.”

Again we passed in front of the church. In what looked like the vicarage at one side, three large windows lit the road in front. A shadow passed over the blinds. A door banged. Hurriedly we dived into the shadow farther on. The footfalls of a single man sounded behind us, ominously determined it seemed. It was too dark to see more than three or four yards, but we were sincerely glad when the sound was gradually left behind and we found ourselves in the open country on a sort of cart track.

“This isn’t the road, either. Too far west this time,” was my conclusion. “The former road is the better of the two. We’ll strike back to it across-country.”

We did so in twenty minutes’ work over fields. It soon began to tally better with the direction on the map. Two hours through firefly infested forest saw us enter another village, as dark and as safe as any we had yet passed through. At its farther end we stopped.

“We’ve simply got to see whether we can’t get more water,” I said. “I don’t really know where we are. I expect it will be all right, but I do not know how long it will take us to find a brook. These farms must have a water-supply somewhere. Just wait at the corner here. I’ll go scouting. If anything happens to me, I’ll make enough noise to let you know of it. Then you can scoot out of the village and wait for me a reasonable time somewhere along the road.” And I left them protesting mildly.

Across a manure-littered farmyard I splashed stealthily into a sort of kitchen-garden, as it turned out. Standing there I used my flashlight once for a look round. From behind me, right over my head and in easy reach, stretched the large branch of a tree, bending under a heavy load of apples. The first I touched remained in my hand at once, which showed them to be ripe. I crammed my pockets and filled my hat. I got almost thirty. Then I joined my companions, who were getting impatient and anxious. It never occurred to me to send Tynsdale and Kent to get their quota, nor did they think of suggesting it. I am still regretting the omission. We divided the spoils, and sank our teeth into the hard, juicy, sweet flesh of the fruit which had tempted the Mother of us all.

At the end of the village a broken sign-board lay in the ditch: “Village of Wahn, Borough of ——, District of ——,” etc. With a sinking heart I fumbled for my map.

“Form round and let’s have a look,” I said. “Here we are! I’m beastly sorry; I’ve been a fool! We took the wrong road at Spahn. That big village was Soegel, not Werpeloh, as I thought. No wonder we were puzzled. No wonder I almost got us into a hopeless mess. Fortunately we are clear now, and, but for water, better off, if anything, than on our proper route. Let’s be traveling now, and see whether we can make Kluse. It’s a little over six miles.”

The mistake was a very bitter pill for me to swallow. The fact that no harm had come of it was little consolation. One simply must not make mistakes on an escape.

Forest and swamp-land, telegraph-poles and fireflies, and drumming showers of rain, and we were, oh, so tired!

At 3:45 a very large, solitary building on our right lured me toward it in search of the precious liquid. It was an enormous sheep stable, the packed occupants of which set up a terrified bleating when the ray of my torch struck accidentally through a hole in the wall. A motion to get into the loft for a good day’s sleep was negatived on Kent’s determined opposition, as too dangerous.

Half an hour later we dragged ourselves into a thick pine copse, pitched camp in impenetrable darkness, moistened our lips with some vapid rain-water, and fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXIV
CROSSING THE EMS

It was still dark when I opened my eyes. A steady sound was all around me, and close at hand a more definite one: Tap-tap-tap-tap. I was only half awake.

I stretched out my hand and put it into a pool of water which had formed on the oilsilk covering us. It was raining heaven’s hardest.

Half an hour of disjointed thinking brought me to the conclusion that we had better do something. As yet the overcoats underneath the oilsilks were hardly wet. The first gray light of dawn was beginning to filter through the close-standing trees.

“Wake up! Wake up! It’s raining,” I called. “We’ll get soaked, and we don’t want to carry an extra thirty pounds of water on our backs.”

I got on my feet. With the heavy clasp-knife bought in Hanover I lopped off the branches just over our heads and stretched an awning of oilsilks three feet above the ground, attempting ineffectually to make them shed the water over the edge of the shelter, instead of letting it accumulate on us. For a time it was all right; then the rain ceased.

By now the light showed that we had camped far too near the road for proper concealment. But the awning had found approval in the eyes of my friends, and I felt such pride in the contrivance that I hesitated to advise moving camp farther into the thicket. Instead, I set to work to camouflage it with a screen of branches and young trees, which I cut off and stuck in the ground. I got myself much wetter by doing all this than if I had taken things quietly. So did Tynsdale, who was infected by my passion for work.

When a cart creaked along the road, its wheels plainly visible from our hiding-place, we resolved to move. In the heart of the thicket the trees were much smaller—only a little taller than ourselves—and more widely spaced. This and the open sky above us gave us a sensation of freedom and fresh air. I constructed another shelter. Occasional showers during the morning filled the sagging places of the awning with water, and this we drank in spite of the bitter taste imparted to it by the oiled fabric.

Sleep, even in the intervals between the showers, was almost out of the question. With the day, thousands of mosquitoes had come to life among the grasses covering the ground. They rose in clouds wherever we went, and attacked the rash beings who unexpectedly had penetrated into their fastness. Soon our hands and faces were red and swollen with their bites.

About noon the last clouds disappeared. The sun began to pour down from a deep blue sky, its rays falling hot and scorching into the windless space between the trees. We divested ourselves of our wet upper garments, and spread them on the firs around us to dry in the sun.

The only sounds that came to us were the occasional tooting of a tug on the river Ems, now not more than three miles to the west. The rarer and nearer shriek of a railway engine on a line parallel to its bank interrupted every now and again the zzzz-ping, zzzz-ping, of the hovering mosquitoes. A dog barked near by. A slow cart rolled and creaked past the copse.

The road in front of the thicket was converging toward the railway, which it met three to four miles to the north of us at the village and station of Kluse, a little more than two miles to the east of Steinbild and the river Ems. Two and a half miles to the north of this last village a wood was indicated on the map. This was our next objective.

From information received, we supposed the Ems to be strongly guarded by sentries and patrols. The five-mile-wide ribbon of country between its western bank and the Dutch frontier was Sperrgebiet (closed territory). Nobody was allowed to enter it except by special military permit. A day’s observation from the shelter of the forest was to show us how best to cross the river—whether we could swim it, with or without luggage, and if necessary, to permit the construction of a small raft to ferry the latter across. Perhaps we could steal a boat!

Near the station of Kluse we intended to cross the railway line, sneak through the village, and then walk across-country to the river and the forest.

Dusk found us behind some bushes by the deserted roadside, awaiting the night.

We started early, walking slowly at first, to squander time. As darkness thickened, we increased our pace. But it is difficult to speed up when one has started slowly. Perhaps the village and station were farther away than we thought. Anyhow, it seemed an age before we caught sight of the first signal-lights on the railway. As during the previous night, the road lay through perfectly flat, desolate swamp land, crossed by ditches of stagnant water. A wood accompanied us on our right for some time. The stars were occasionally obscured by drifting clouds.

Suddenly we saw a cluster of red signal-lights over the dim shape of a signal bridge, the lighted station building a hundred yards beyond, and a level crossing turning out of our road at right angles. “This is it,” I said.

We stepped across the metals. Just beyond them, a small building on our left, its windows lighted, cast a glimmer over the road. Apprehensively glancing round I passed into the deep shadow of the avenue beyond it.

A little later we were standing on a bridge in the small village. A considerable brook rushed gurgling underneath.

“When we passed that house,” Tynsdale said casually, “a large dog of the police type came after me. I was walking last, you know. The brute pushed his nose into the back of my knee and turned away without a sound!”

We had a good drink at the brook, then proceeded along the cut-up road, tree-lined and dark. In a likely spot, perhaps five hundred yards behind the village, I stopped. “Here’s where our cross-country work starts; keep close behind.”

As nearly as possible we proceeded in a northwesterly direction. The going was bad. The country was divided by wire fences, deep ditches and hedges, into small fields, most of them swampy meadows. Half the time we waded through water over the tops of our shoes. This continued for an indefinite period, and terminated when we reached a road where it curved from a northerly direction toward the southwest. Here I had what proved to be an inspiration.

I had seen the beginning of the road marked on the map farther north. On paper it terminated nowhere. Actually it was here, in a spot where it ought not to be. Its deeply rutted surface showed that it was frequently used. The village of Steinbild, to the south of us now, was obviously its destination.

I explained to my companions: “I’m as certain as I can be that this road enters Steinbild close to the water’s edge and avoids the main street. The curve seems to show that. I’d like to follow it. To lie in the woods, away from anywhere, and watch the river, may not gain us anything. In the village we may find a boat. We’ve any amount of time, anyway, and can always come back. It’ll not be so very dangerous, with due caution, if the place is as dark as the villages we have seen so far. Will you chance it and follow me?”

“We’ll follow wherever you lead,” said Kent heartily. Tynsdale’s nod I took for granted; I couldn’t see it.

In a quarter of an hour we were among scattered houses. Again, five minutes later, we stood in the shadow of tremendous trees, in such darkness that we were aware of one another’s presence only from the sound of breathing and small movements.

In front of us the mirage of a few stars danced uncertainly on the smooth surface of a fairly wide river. A fish splashed noisily while we stood listening for suspicious sounds.

We moved carefully along the river path, upstream, to the south. The trees continued in unbroken, stately procession. A barge of the large German steel type lay half-way toward midstream. A boat was tied to its stern. Something, I forget now what it was, made us go on—I have a dim recollection of a light in its cabin. Another barge, with a boat by her side, loomed up, riding high on the water and without cargo, opposite a tiny pier of earth, which ended perhaps twenty yards from the boat. In a house, some distance farther up, one lighted window winked in the night.

We were standing on the pier.

“Who’s to get that boat?” asked Tynsdale.

“Draw lots for it,” I suggested. The shortest piece of match remained in my hand. Off came my knapsack.

“Going in all standing?” inquired Kent.

“No fear; nothing like doing things comfortably. Get out that towel, will you, and be ready.”

My clothes were off. Cautiously I slipped into the water. I remember distinctly, even at this moment, that my toes gripped the sticks forming the foundation of the pier. The bank fell vertically beyond my depth. Bracing myself against the cold shock, I pushed off, to be taken into a delicious tepid embrace by the kindly river. Two long strokes. I paused to feel the current. There was none. Three more. The boat loomed above me. Shooting up, I caught the gunwale at the stern with the tip of my fingers. “Bump, bump, bump,” went the bows against the lighter’s side in feeble movement. “Bump, bump, bump.” I had drawn myself up, and clambered in. “Bump.” I stood in the bows, fumbling with the painter, which was big enough to serve a young White Star liner for a hawser. “Bump.” The gap between lighter and boat widened as I shoved off carefully.

I grabbed at a pole lying in the bottom of the boat. The water proved too deep for punting, so I used it as a paddle, standing on a forward thwart.

The boat was an enormously clumsy affair. Tynsdale snatched at the painter when the bows touched the pier. “Get into your things, we’ll do the rest.”

“Here’s the brandy.” Kent solicitously handed me the flask. I didn’t need it, but thought I deserved a pull.

When I was dressed, I joined my friends, and we put our things into the boat. Tynsdale, who had grown up among shipping, had swung her round, so that her nose pointed downstream. We clambered in.

Kent and I were sitting in the bow when he pushed off, and started to propel us across the river in proper waterman’s style with an oar he had found in the bottom of the boat. Silently working it over the stern, he guided her round the counter of the barge, underneath the wire cable which connected the latter with the one lower down, and out into the placid stream.

Not a word was spoken after we got clear. The large bulk of the empty barge dwindled as the strip of water widened between us. The trees on the bank we had left grew smaller, a trembling line of light glimmered on the surface of the river from the winking window of the cottage. Then the other bank grew distinct and high. The boat’s nose swung upstream and touched. I am not quite sure who was ashore first, Kent or I, but I am certain I had the painter.

“Don’t let her drift,” Tynsdale whispered from his quarter-deck, when I had scrambled ashore. “Belay somewhere, if you can.” We found a post with an iron ring on top, almost embedded in the ground, and made fast. Our knapsacks were put ashore. Tynsdale left last, as befitted the captain.

“Leave her there,” he counseled. “If we let her drift and get caught, we’ll be charged with stealing her. They may not trouble to investigate if they find her here.”

Hurriedly we retired among some bushes which dotted the hollows along the river bank.

“Council of war,” I suggested in high glee. “What’s to be done now? What time, Kent?”

“Twelve-forty-five.”

“What are your opinions? Are we to try to cross the frontier to-night or not?”

“To-night, by all means to-night!” urged Tynsdale. We were all very much excited, of course.

“Time’s getting short! Wait until to-morrow night!” counseled cautious Kent.

The decision rested with me.

“Time is getting rather short, but we might do it. Question is, can we find cover if we don’t? It must be good, to serve its purpose in the Sperrgebiet. I think we ought to dump everything we can spare, and go forward as fast as possible. We can always alter our minds, until after we get on to the morass.”

“Good!” grunted Tynsdale.

“As you wish,” Kent gave way gracefully.

“Then hurry!” I instructed.

Feverishly we went through our impedimenta, thrust the remainder of our biscuits, escapers’ shortbread, chocolate, and such indispensable things as were not already there, into our pockets, and shoved rucksacks, overcoats, raincoats, and everything else underneath the bushes.

I knew the map too well to want to look at it long. Had we not spent days studying the stretch in front of us, often with the help of magnifying glasses?

“What time, Kent?”

“One o’clock.”

“Give me exactly half an hour.”

Relieved of about thirty pounds in weight, I set the fastest pace in my power downstream, along the river bank. I hoped to find a path there, which was to take us to the “jumping-off place” to the north of us, where I intended to get to the swamp. The path was there. The going was easy, and comparatively safe. Bushes dotted the banks and gave continuous shelter.

It cannot be denied that our procedure was risky. We took it for granted that we should not meet any sentries along the river, in spite of our information to the contrary. But slow and careful going seemed equally risky at the time. Only speed could help us across the frontier that night.

My decision in favor of trying to bring our venture to an immediate conclusion was wrong. I ought to have seen that it was more than likely that we should find cover along the river. Yet—I don’t know.

“The half-hour is over,” said Kent.

The river was flowing placidly on our right, swirling softly. Straight across from us a back-water lost itself between tall reeds. This was the spot I had hoped to reach. We filled our water-bottles and drank. Then I slid down the bank, raised here above the surrounding country, and started due west, followed by my companions. Passing a few yards of scattered bushes, with rank grass between them, I plunged into a dense thicket of oak saplings. Pushing and straining, I worked on, in order to get through what I imagined to be a narrow belt. It would not come to an end, but grew thicker instead, finally making progress impossible. In the light of the torch the small trees stood impenetrably close.

“Here’s our cover; no time to work round this patch, and no need to, either,” I said.

“Well, I’m glad,” commented Kent.

“I wish we hadn’t left our overcoats behind,” I reflected. “Let’s see. Four hours till daylight. We’ll be damnably cold. Let’s go fetch ’em. Heaps of time. Nothing else to do.”

Back on the river bank I tied my handkerchief to a branch, knee-high above the ground. After a careful look round, to impress the contours of the landscape on my mind, we started back.

I had not the slightest misgivings about our ability to find our knapsacks and to disappear again into our hiding-place. The hollow where we had left them? Gracious me! I could walk there blindfolded. I could draw its shape now. My cock-sureness was not at all damped by Kent’s dismal forebodings, on which he started as we approached the spot.

We found the boat, but not our luggage; we searched for it more than half an hour, quite recklessly at the last. There were thousands of apparently identical hollows. They had multiplied exceedingly during our absence. I thought I entered them all. But our luggage was lost, and stayed lost.

“No use. We’ve got to go.” I fell in with the urging of the others at last.

At about 3:30 we stretched ourselves on the dry leaves among the oak saplings and fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXV
THE LAST LAP

Half an hour later we were awake again, shivering and with chattering teeth. The wind was rising and rustling in the canopy of leaves over our heads. It was dark and bitterly cold.

“I’m going to do something,” I announced. “We may have rain. I’ll build a shelter.”

The oak saplings offered an ideal material for an arbor, although the clasp-knife did not bite readily through their tough fibers. Jointly we interlaced the crowns of six or seven stout saplings, growing in a circle, and twisted long branches in and out of the stems. We made a small but dense roof. The floor we covered with small twigs and leaves to the depth of two or three inches.

The exertion made the blood course through our veins again. Before we had finished, it was day.

The wind had increased to a gale, which shrieked and roared and rustled among the foliage, sending occasional eddies even into our hiding-place. It kept the rain off, which threatened now and again during the forenoon. There were no mosquitoes. I do not think there ever are any among oaks.

Several excursions to the river bank, in couples or singly, one of us always remaining in the arbor, warmed us a little when we had got chilled to the bone. The river path, and the belt of scattered bushes, remained deserted all day. But we observed a considerable amount of river traffic. Long strings of barges, mostly empty, were being towed upstream by powerful tugs.

Tynsdale scouted toward the west, away from the river, and reported a farm some distance from our hiding-place in that direction, and the existence of a pond and a belt of marsh-land behind the thicket.

We slept in snatches of minutes, until the cold awoke us again, and again sent us dancing or scouting about. It was the most miserable camp we had yet experienced, but the safest, and the one where we were the least thirsty. There was more water about us than was altogether desirable, we thought at the time. Twenty-four hours later, looking back, we altered our opinion.

The distance from this camp to the Dutch frontier was five miles to the west-northwest, as the crow flies. Opposite to us the border traversed an extensive swamp, the Bourtange Moor, twenty-five miles in length, and between five and seven miles in width.

According to our map, neither road nor path led over it, which was one of the reasons why we had selected it as the point to strike at. “Information received” had encouraged our belief that the swamps which extend along nearly the whole of the northern frontier between Holland and Germany can be traversed in summer and autumn during normal years. Other information tended to show that comparatively they were negligently guarded. I had never forgotten a newspaper article which I had read in Ruhleben in the winter of 1915-1916. A territorial had described his duties as a frontier guard. There was one passage: “When on duty I shared a small hut with another man.… We had to walk two hours to the nearest post.” Two men to guard a two-hours’ stretch! Ridiculous! Camouflage! but still—

Our route would be across the northern half of the moor. I had talked it over with my companions many a time.

“There is this large forest at the north end of the swamp. If the recent rains have made the swamp impassable, we’ll have to make for it and try to cross the frontier where it runs through the wood. I should hate to have to do that. A hundred to one, sentries there will be as thick as flies in summer. But we may have no alternative. For that eventuality, we will take the most favorable course across the swamp, walking west by north. Since we must continually go round bad places, we will make all corrections northerly, and thus edge off toward the wood, and lessen the distance in that way.

“These two roads, parallel to the river, which we shall have to cross before getting on to the swamp proper, will be dangerous. I shouldn’t wonder if sentries and patrols were to be found on them. But I cannot imagine how they can easily relieve a man on a trackless morass; can you?”

At 5:30 we ate our last meal. A very slender one it was. We reserved only some chocolate and the tin of Horlick’s malted milk tablets, which we always had looked upon as our emergency ration. These we divided into equal shares.

At 5:45 I advised the cutting of long, stout staves. They would be useful, I thought, for the work ahead of us. I had no idea that they would make all the difference between failure and success.

At 6 o’clock we could not stick it any longer inside the thicket. We made our way out, and walked up and down behind the bushes, waiting for darkness.

Of course we were on edge. I do not think we had had in all eighteen hours’ sleep since Saturday. It was now Friday. And we were merely waiting, waiting for the time when we could act, when the game was to be decided. We were not very nervous, but we were subdued. I think we all believed we should succeed, although I tried to look on the black side of things. It seemed so impossible that three years—three years!—of captivity should come to an end. Did we look far ahead? I remember that my mind went no farther than to visualize a river, a mile or so across the border, which was to tell us that we were free!

The sun had disappeared, the wind lulled into silence. The sky, brushed free of clouds, spanned pale blue from sky-line to sky-line. A crescent moon had peeped her last over the western rim of the world, and followed the sun. The shadows were growing dense underneath bush and canopied foliage.

The river murmured sleepily as we went to drink. Tynsdale crouched against the steep bank and handed up the full bottles, one by one. We took up our staves and very slowly walked down the river, before it was quite dark, looking for open country on the left.

The stars had come out, one after another. Quickly their numbers increased, until myriads of them twinkled and glittered. It was an absolutely ideal night for our purpose.

The oaks on our left came to an end. A shallow depression, with the glint of water here and there, intervened between us and the rising ground some distance away.

“Here we start,” said I, “on our last lap!”

“Eight-thirty,” said Kent.

“Come on!” I answered.

Descending from the river bank, we found the ground most difficult. Two or three wide drainage ditches were crossed with the help of their sluice-gates, smaller ones we jumped with our staves. Then came marshy meadows and open patches of water. For about an hour we were almost always in over our ankles, frequently much deeper, wandering through the shallowest places.

In a sort of dell, on rising ground now, with small copses to right, left, and in front, we halted, removed our boots and emptied them of water, and wrung out our socks and trousers. This was quite necessary. The squirting noise of our steps advertised our presence a long way in the still night.

Here, if I mistake not—it may have been a little later—we arranged the order of our march. I took the van. My task was to pick the way to keep the direction. Kent, next, was to pay particular attention to our nearer surroundings, try to spot danger—sentries and patrols, etc.—and keep count of the time. Every four or five hundred yards he was to signal “down,” when we were to “flop.” By this manoeuver we would contract the horizon and, perhaps, spot sentries against the sky-line. Tynsdale, in the rear, was to check the direction, and speak, if he saw me apparently make a wrong move. All of us were to keep our eyes wide open and all senses on the alert.

When we topped the rise we sank down silently. There was the first road, across our course, hardly discernible on the black, flat expanse. Nothing moved; no sound, except that of our own breathing, disturbed the stillness. Obliquely across some fields we came to the second road.

Again we crouched. “All’s well. Go on.”

After that, a smooth, very springy surface made agreeable walking for a short time.

“Hou—” I started.

“Houses to left and right in front!” whispered Kent. Again we looked and listened.

They were two small single structures, standing perhaps three hundred yards apart, as if dropped from a giant child’s play-box. When I had led through the space between, a path was found to run past them.

Now began the swamp proper, as flat and as black, at first, as a congealed lake of asphalt, covered with the same exceedingly short growth we had already encountered, like very tiny heather plants, or their densely intertwined roots, and very springy with the concealed bog underneath.

With the greatest care I kept the north star just a little in front of my right shoulder. We were advancing rapidly. There seemed no possibility of sentries standing on a trackless waste.

I felt very sure of myself, very much exhilarated, very happy. We had time to notice our surroundings. They were eerie in the extreme. We were in the center of a perfect circle, black as pitch, except for some whitish patches ahead.

Those whitish patches came nearer. The first we approached I tested with my staff. Firm sand! They increased in number, flowed together here and there. Only narrow black strips now, connected with larger black areas beyond. Suddenly, one of the white spaces, not a whit different to look at from those we had already crossed, was water. Correction north. They were all water! We were being pushed to the north at a great rate. So I corrected southerly once or twice, at first, then alternately with a northerly deviation.

It was nerve-racking business to pick the way. Our deliberate halts and surveys had grown more infrequent as the involuntary ones increased in number. Occasionally we had seen and crossed a track.

I think Kent had just announced “Twelve o’clock,” when—

“Pfattt!” said a rifle, far to the north. We stared intently in the direction of the sound.

“Pfattt!” it repeated spitefully; “pfattt!”

We could not see the spit of flame. It must have been in the wood. Later, when we met the men whom the bullets had been meant for, this proved to be correct.

Without a word to the others I turned due west. The swamps are kindlier than German riflemen.

We left off making any remarks. We were too strung up for talk.

“This is a patch of a different kind,” I thought. Like dull silver it gleamed under the stars, not half as bright as the others. The ground was very unstable all about us. I could feel slow waves rolling sluggishly under my feet, caused by my own and my companions’ footsteps on the thin carpet of vegetable matter covering the morass. When I tested the patch I found it to be slime. Correction southerly, all southerly now, to edge away from the wood. The areas of slime increased in number, multiplied, flowed together. The third I came to seemed to offer some resistance to the probing staff at first, then the pole went in as into water. I lost my balance. My left foot swung forward, to find another hold. Instantly it was under the surface. Just as quick Kent’s arms were about me. Violently he jerked me back, I clinging to my staff.

“Thanks!”

The ground got worse and worse. Some of the slimy places which appeared firmer than the rest we crossed. Flat-footedly we slithered over them one after the other, our staves held horizontally.

Abruptly we were in the peat cuttings—great yawning holes and ditches, running mainly from north to south, black, with sometimes a star or two, mirrored in the foul water a foot or so below the edge. The passage had to be made across bridges of standing peat, hardly ever more than two feet wide, which swayed as we shuffled over them. I held grimly to the western course, as well as I could. Going south seemed easier, but that direction meant no progress toward the frontier, rather the reverse. And north? No, thank you! Not after those shots.

I was standing precariously balanced on a peat bridge, the pole thrown far forward as a third leg—oh, those precious poles!—when a splash sounded behind, and a gurgling noise. Kent had gone in.

“What’s happened? Can’t you help him? I can’t!” I called to Tynsdale.

We were under far too great a stress to feel any particular emotion. At any rate, I was. And as to helping, I couldn’t even turn my head without losing my balance.

Before Tynsdale could reply, I heard a slight scramble, the swishing of water, and then Kent’s subdued voice expressing his entirely unsubdued opinion about peat cuttings. Part of his particular bridge had crumbled under his foot. He had fallen into a hole. The stout oak sapling, carried firmly in both hands, one end of it rammed into the ground for a hold, had fallen across the opening, its other end descending on firm ground. It had kept Kent suspended. Only his legs had gone into the water.

The incident decided me. “South,” I called over my shoulder.

A short time later, the peat holes grew scarcer.

“West!”

There were the slimy patches again! We went around a few. Most of them we crossed in a bee-line. They seemed firmer here. A few much smaller sheets of water! Then again a flat, unbroken, springy surface.

We were all going strong, out to make westing as fast as we could put our feet to the ground; no thought, now, of crouching.

A barbed wire, behind it a deep, wide ditch, beyond that a plowed field, were in front of us.

The human mind is a queer contrivance. We had just negotiated some rather ugly ground. We had not bothered about, hardly become aware of, the risks we had taken. Now we were hesitating for a few moments in front of a ditch with firm sides which, at the worst, we could easily have waded. At last we jumped, landing in the water half-way up to our knees. I lost my precious aluminium water-bottle there. Then across the field, across another ditch, and so four times.

On the way I asked Tynsdale: “Nothing to remark about our course?”

“I thought you altered it, and swung due west at one point.”

“Yes, after the shots.”

“Intentional?”

“Sure!”

“Thought so.”

A canal, seemingly in course of construction, was crossed on a large tree-trunk, which bridged it. Kent and I did it astride. Tynsdale walked. Two hundred yards farther we stood on the banks of another full-grown canal.

“We must be in Holland,” I remarked.

“I wouldn’t like to say so,” replied Kent. “You know there’s a canal parallel and close to the frontier on the German side, forty or fifty miles farther south.”

“Yes, and it’s marked on our map, and this isn’t.”

“A river, not a canal, was to show us we were in Holland!”

“True, but they may have turned the river into a canal. Man, the frontier runs across the swamp. We’re off the swamp. We’re in Holland, I bet you what you like.”

“I don’t think you ought to be so cock-sure.”

“But I am. Here, do you want to swim across?”

“No.”

“All right! We’ll turn south along its banks!”

Soon we came abreast of a house which lay a hundred yards or so to the east, toward Germany.

“Let’s go have a look,” I suggested. We did so.

The whole character of the cottage, for such it was, struck me as un-German. I pulled out my torch: “This isn’t German. Look at that front door. Decorated with painted flowers!”

Kent arrived breathlessly from somewhere: “This can’t be Germany! There is a big dish, full of potatoes, on the table in the front room!”

“Let’s knock!”

We knocked. We had no time to ask questions, for, before the last rap had sounded, “Holland! Holland!” called a male voice from within.

Holland! We stood and looked at one another silently, then retreated a few steps.

“Cheers, boys,” I said. “Hip, hip, hip—”

Three feeble cheers seemed to be immediately swallowed up in the darkness. How thin, weak, and far away our voices sounded!

Then we turned, to make our way to the nearest village.

CHAPTER XXVI
FREE AT LAST

We had only gone a few steps when a man came running after us. His Dutch and our German made conversation possible. Kent was rather good at understanding and imparting his meaning.

“Orlog gefangenen?” the man asked.

“Yah, yah!”

“Roosland?”

“Nay, nay; Engelsch!”

“Engelsch?” He gripped our hands and shook them warmly. Then we had to accompany him back to his cottage. He ushered us into the room where Kent had seen the “big dish, full of potatoes.” His wife, in picturesque undress, fired a volley of questions at her husband, clasped her hands, shook ours, and began lighting the kitchener. Two daughters—or were there three?—emerged from cavernous cabin beds, let into the wall. Shyly they dressed in front of us.

Then the table was loaded with things to eat. We had fried veal, bread, butter, and plenty of milk and hot coffee. All this was offered us spontaneously in a farm laborer’s cottage at 2:30 in the morning. Enviously I watched my companions enjoying their meal. I was too done up to make more than a show of it.

A little later the man accompanied us to the nearest village, Sellingen. He walked in front with Kent, Tynsdale and I followed in the rear. The walk was a nightmare to me. Our guide carried a lantern. I could not keep my eyes off its reflex on the ground. The direct rays stabbed intolerably into my eyes. It seemed to hang in a Gothic archway, which always kept receding in front of me. I was almost convinced of the reality of the archway.

“Can’t we get through that gate?” I asked Tynsdale.

“What gate? Here, where are you going?” and he pulled my arm and saved me from walking slap into the canal. After that I pulled myself together and felt better. Both my friends were much fresher than I.

We arrived at the village at last, and were given a delicious bed on plenty of straw, with plenty of blankets.

Kent was up early next morning. He accepted I do not know how many successive invitations to breakfast, while Tynsdale and I slept until half-past seven. In the course of the morning we were taken to a military station at Ter Apel by the village policeman, who appeared in his best uniform, with two huge silver tassels at his chest.

The very atmosphere was different. A sergeant in whose special charge we were placed regretted that he could not put proper rooms at our disposal. “But since the gentlemen will have to be quarantined first, they will perhaps understand if we keep them away from upholstered furniture.”

We had a wash, and an excellent meal, with a bottle of port.

“Did you meet any sentries?” we were asked.

“Not one.”

“Where did you cross over?”

“North of Sellingen.”

“You came over the swamp, then?” with elevated eyebrows.

“Yes, right across.”

“You were lucky. Up to a fortnight ago, sentries stood along the frontier at one hundred-meter intervals. Then they were withdrawn, because the swamp became impassable. You were fortunate, too, in getting across the Ems. A great many fugitives get drowned in it.”

“Once, during my first attempt, I got caught on Dutch soil by the Germans,” I remarked in the course of the conversation.

“What? On Dutch territory? Where was that?” The sergeant was very much interested.

“I can show it to you on a map. It was northwest of Bocholt.”

He disappeared and returned with maps and telegraph forms. I told him my story, and he made notes and wrote two telegrams.

“What you say is possible,” he said at last. “Our men stand three hundred meters behind the actual frontier.”

The next two nights we spent in a hutment in Coevorden. We met a number of Russian privates and N.C.O.’s there, who had made good their escape and were, like us, waiting to be sent to a quarantine camp. Among them were three who had crossed the same night as we, but through the woods at the northern end of the swamp. We were indebted to them and their dead comrade on German soil for the warning shots at midnight.

There followed a fortnight in quarantine camp in Enschede. Under the Dutch regulations, any person “crossing the frontier in an irregular manner,” without a passport, visÉd by a Dutch consul, is subjected to this quarantine. We tried to shorten our stay there, pleading that we came from a healthy camp. We were unsuccessful.

We did not like Enschede camp. The food was insufficient for us, who could not live almost exclusively on potatoes. We found it strange that we should not be allowed to supplement our rations by purchasing extra food. The only things we could buy, at first, were apples and chocolate, and only a limited amount of either. Our deep gratitude is due, however, to Mr. Tattersall of Enschede, who indefatigably looked after us and the other Englishmen in Enschede camp, much to the disadvantage of his pocket.

After we had received a clean bill of health, being civilians, we were allowed to proceed to Rotterdam without a guard. We arrived there at ten o’clock one night, and I was promptly arrested, being mistaken for an embezzler who had decamped the same day from somewhere, taking fifteen thousand florins of another man’s money with him. My health passport saved the situation.

The next morning we were at the British consulate. The rest of the day we careered through the town in a motor-car—from the consulate to the shipping-office, from the shipping-office to somewhere else, from there to the consulate’s doctor, back to the shipping-office and the photographer, and again to the consulate. That night we were on board at Hook of Holland.

Two days afterward—!

In the gray dawn of an autumn morning our small ship heaved to the incoming swell as she steamed out to take up her station in the convoy. Soon she was dancing joyously to the shrilling of the wind and the sizzling swish of the seas. Two long, low gray shapes accompanied us on each quarter. Hardly discernible at first, they grew more distinct with the light. There were more of them, but invisible, guarding the long line of ships. Occasionally other shapes appeared on the horizon, very faint in their war-paint.

Toward evening I saw again the well-remembered piles of a British landing-stage. How often had I pictured them during three long years! It was always there that I had imagined my home-coming. It had become reality.

Six weeks later: Time: 10 A.M. Enter servant.

“You’re wanted on the ’phone, sir.”

“Who is it?”

“Doesn’t want to give a name, sir.”

“Thanks.—Hullo! Hullo!”

“That Mr. Keith?”

“Yes. Who’s speaking?”

“Don’t you recognize my voice, Eric?”

“No, can’t say I do.”

“It’s Wace!”

“What’s that?”

“Me—Wallace, Wallace!”

“Good heavens!”

“Yes; arrived last night! Speaking from Hackney. You know!”

So Wallace had won through too, though playing a lone game!