prison had they only had the faintest notion of our identity! It was one of those amusing situations which could be enjoyed at the time. Most similar experiences are funny only in retrospect. Whenever people entered our compartment, I was always either pretending to sleep or pretending to be very deeply engrossed in my book, which I read twice through. Keith later on pointed out to me with pardonable glee that I had bought a faulty copy, several chapters of the book appearing in duplicate. I had read the book twice from beginning to end without noticing this. My thoughts were centred upon other things than Captain König's adventures. Our own adventures were my chief concern. On arrival in Hannover about 7 o'clock the same evening, we deposited our luggage at the railway station and went into the town. It was already dark, and we spent about an hour in the main streets making a few additional purchases, visiting cafés, and searching for a suitable hotel for the night. In a shop where we tried in vain to purchase a pair of boots for me, in place of my thin ones, two young Germans who came in eyed us very suspiciously, and Keith thought he saw them follow us and enter the same café. We immediately paid for our beer and, once in the crowded main street, we set out to throw them off the scent, zigzagging through quiet and orowded streets until we felt reasonably certain that they had lost sight of us. Knowing quite well that the odds were dead against us, we were both of the opinion that it would be very nice, after recapture, should we fail in our enterprise, to have as many pleasant memories as possible to dwell upon in solitary confinement. What could be pleasanter than the sharp contrast between prison skilly and the memory of at least one good square meal? So, to a restaurant. We found Hannover's best in the St Georg Palast Restaurant, where we had a most excellent fish meal. The large room was full of elegant women and smart officers, in their pale-blue uniforms, Hannover being a centre where the élite of the cavalry officers of the German army are quartered. We ate, drank, and smoked, supremely at our ease by this time, and when an excellent string orchestra on a raised platform at the end of the room began to play light music, I had to take a very firm grip of myself in order not to blubber like a child. Heighho! we were having a run for our money. Late that night we went to our fifth-rate hotel, where no one asked to see our papers (though we were required to sign the registration book), and we asked to be called at an early hour the following morning. I gave myself a name which I thought would not be too difficult to pronounce, and quite enjoyed inventing occupation, birthday, the name of the place from which I had come, and so on. I made, and remembered when it was too late, was to misspell the name of the town I chose as my place of residence. One mistake tain stations en route, we were in the train until about seven o'clock in the evening. Captain König again rendered me yeoman service, and I am very grateful to the gallant gentleman. When we were called the next morning, Keith, roused from sleep by the noise of some one knocking at the door, called out in English "Thank you!" which I tried to drown just in time with a very sleepy but fairly loud "Danke schön!" At breakfast, the waiter was very insolent because we could not produce traveller's breadoards, and it was difficult to know what attitude to take up towards him. An attitude of haughtiness on the one hand, or of obsequiousness on the other, might have ended in fatal consequences. We got out of the difficulty by telling him resignedly that we would do without bread altogether. He little knew! Although we had no intention of leaving from the main station, we sent the porter to the cloak-room with our suitcase, and called for it about an hour later. The intervening time we spent in a park, the name of which I have forgotten, in the suburbs of the city. Then we took a tram to a suburban station named Hainholz, to the west of Hannover on the main line, and there booked to Osnabrück, I believe, by slow train, our intention being to book again there to Haltern, a small railway junction about twenty to twenty-five miles from the Dutch frontier. It was about ten o'clock when we left, and apart from long waits at cer At Minden, where we had a long wait, we wished to spend our time in the station buffet, and in order to reach it, had to pass through the barrier between the ticket collector and two German military police, who were examining papers. The presence of these military policemen made us very nervous, but we noticed that, like the "red-caps" in our own country, they had to do only with men in uniform, and when our turn came we passed by them quite safely. In the buffet we were served with a fine veal ragout and vegetables at a very low price, and no coupons were asked for. I mention this faot because I have often contended that food conditions in Berlin are not typical of food conditions throughout Germany, and in my opinion never will be. It is misleading in the extreme for a casual observer to generalise from what he has seen in Berlin. My experience is that food conditions vary very greatly throughout the whole empire, according to the favourable or unfavourable situation of the town in question, and also according to the efficient or inefficient administration of the particular distriot. Prophecies to the effect that Germany will collapse through starvation in a few weeks' or a few months' time fate. should be received with great best, and leave the rest to caution, and inquiry should be made 88 to whether the prophet is generalising from one specific case, or really in a position to speak with authority on conditions as they actually are throughout the whole of Germany. We arrived at Haltern, the station past Dülmen-a great distribution camp for military prisoners about seven that evening, Keith having rebooked at Osnabrück without difficulty. Fortunately, quite a crowd of people was leaving the station as we passed through the barrier, I remaining some little way behind my chum, and following him at a distance along the dark road which led to the village. Haltern had been more or less Hobson's choice. Among other things which we lost in losing our parcel in Berlin, was our map, and as Keith had taken this route on a previous occasion and found much to recommend it, we thought it better to trust to his remembering the landmarks, even by night, rather than gamble on a new and entirely unknown route. Luck had been dead against us all along the line. Everything that could possibly go wrong, short of recapture, had gone wrong; and when, in the train, we saw snow falling and felt the bitter cold, we knew that only the luck that carries men back to safety, after fighting a forlorn hope, could possibly carry us through. Still, we were in for it. There was no turning back. We resolved to do our The night, as I have said, was bitterly cold. The road and paths beneath our feet were covered with sheet-ice, and it was difficult at times to prevent oneself from falling. We got to the centre of the village, and then came to a main road running due west, where I noticed a large sign, indicating that this was the road to Wesel. I still remained some distance behind my chum, who was walking ahead rapidly with the suitcase. When we came to the outer edge of the village, I noticed that a woman wearing a shawl passed him, going on her way from the country into the village, stared intently at him, went on, stopped again, turned round again, and continued to watch him for some seconds. Then she hurried on into the village. She took no notice of me. As soon as she had disappeared in the darkness, I rushed up to Keith and told him what had taken place, and said that I feared the woman had gone to the village to report the fact of our presence in the neighbourhood to the police. Fearing the possibility of immediate pursuit, we dashed from the highroad behind a broken hedge on our right, and flung ourselves flat in the wet grass among stones, turning up our coat-collars so as to hide our white collars and shirts. We lay there for some time, listening and quietly breathing. We heard nothing, and presently Keith arose and made for of wearing it as I preferred the open country in what, I suppose, was a north-westerly to do. While he had been direction, right through the filling the pockets of the fields which covered the rising rucksacks with the chocolate ground. I was about to follow creams we had bought in him, just as he was becoming Berlin, I heard one or two lost to view in the darkness, chocolates fall into the ditch, when I heard footsteps com- and one or two into the open ing in our direction along the suit-case. Thinking that it path at the side of the road. was a pity to waste them, I It was too late to warn Keith, began to fumble in the suitand in any case he was already case with my gloved hand, out of sight of any one passing until I found what I thought by us. I flung myself flat on was one of them. As far as my stomaob, with my head in I knew, the suit-case had the direction of the approach- been emptied. It was much ing footsteps, and listened. too dark to see anything. It was evidently a man comThere was no moon, and no ing into the village, for I stars were visible. In size heard his heavy walk as he and shape, something which I passed me at a distance of picked up from the suit-oase about three yards. In the resembled in every respect meantime Keith had missed the chocolates which we had me, and had come back, bought, and, after tearing off whispering my name. I anwith my teeth part of the swered, joined him, and we tinfoil which covered it, I took again set out for the open a bite and swallowed a portion country. before I had time to spit it out. I did not discover until much later in the evening exactly what it was that I had swallowed, though I felt quite sure it was not chocolate cream. I said nothing about the incident at the moment to Keith, attaching no importance whatsoever to it. It was, as I have said, I have said, pitoh-dark, and we had not gone a hundred yards before it commenced to rain. By that time we had reached a dry ditoh, on one side of which was a ploughed field, at the summit of the slope. Beyond the ploughed field in a direction due west we could see the dim outline of a dark wood silhouetted against the sombre sky, and behind us, on the other side of the ditch, ran the stone wall of a cemetery. Here we began to pack our rucksacks. I was I was ready a little earlier than Keith, owing to the fact that he wished to strap his overcoat to his rucksaok, instead As soon as we were ready we set out to look for a certain road, running west, which Keith had taken on a former occasion. We spent about two hours looking for that road, walking across open country, stumbling across ploughed fields, smashing through the ice which covered ditches, tearing clothes on barbed wire, and sliding across lanes covered with sheet-ice, at the bottom of deep cuttings. I knew that Keith was in very good condition, and I felt, for the first two hours or so, ready to face any physical fatigue. In a certain steep cutting, with high banks and hedges on each side, we heard footsteps, and a man passed us in the dark, who, however, seemed more afraid of us than we were of him. He hurried on past us, and was soon lest to view in the darkness. We had an exceedingly trying two hours, trying both to our nerves and temper, until we found the right road. In order to satisfy ourselves that it was the one we sought, we had to return to the crossroads at the western edge of the village, in order to establish certain facts. Then we set out for the west. Before we had gone very far, and as nearly as I can remember between eleven and twelve at night, I became painfully conscious of the fact that my strength was ebbing fast. I could not understand it, in view of the fact that I had felt so fit in the early part of the evening. We had had a fairly strenuous time searching for the right road, but we had done nothing that could explain the condition in which I began to find myself. Although I said nothing to my friend, he noticed that in spite of my efforts I was not able to keep up speed, and he anxiously questioned me about it. Feeling that my condition was perhaps after all due to my long term of imprisonment-I had had much longer in the Stadt Vogtei Prison than my friend-I thought it possible that I might be able to work it off; but try as I would, I soon found that this was impossible, and all my assurances that I should be all right soon failed to reassure my friend. We discovered quite accidentally at this stage that what I had actually eaten, in the belief that it was chocolate, was as a matter of fact part of the end of a stick of Colgate's shaving soap! I have since learned that it was a well-known dodge among regular soldiers in the British army in times of peace, when a man wanted to avoid taking part in night manœuvres, to swallow a tiny soappill, the effect of this on the action of the heart being of such a character that the man was invariably pronounced by the regimental doctor “temporarily unfit for service." Although I spat out as much as possible of the soap when I discovered it was not chocolate, I had nevertheless swallowed a eertain amount, and most decidedly much more than a tiny pill. My legs and feet became almost like lead, and it was only with the utmost exertion that I was able to drag one foot behind the other. We were filled with consternation. Our route lay for a time along a good road, which rapidly deteriorated and became simply an irregular line of very deep cart-ruts in olay and mud, whieh in a night had been frozen into stone. Snow lay upon the ground, |
