The Escape of a Princess Pat Part 9

There will be many strange tales to come from these camps in the fulness of time. No doubt some will go against us, but the truth must be told at all costs, else the evil goes on and on.

We were sent out one day to dig potato trenches on the moors in a terrible rain. We stuck our spades in the ground and refused. The guards had French rifles of the vintage of 1870 which carried cartridges with bullets that were really slugs of lead. They began to load. A little _unteroffizier_ tugged excitedly at his holster for the revolver.

A big Canadian stepped up: "Wait a minute, mate." He reached down to the little man's waist and drew the gun.

He offered it to its owner, b.u.t.t forward, "Now go ahead and shoot, and we'll chop your d.a.m.ned heads off."

The rest of us confirmed our leader's statement by gathering around threateningly and making gruesome and suggestive motions with our spades. There were two hundred of us and only forty guards. We meant business and they knew it. They took us back to the laager and locked us up.

The following night, that of January 22nd, our guards were reinforced by thirty more.

CHAPTER XIV

AWAY AGAIN

Why the Prisoners Walked--Cold Feet Again--The Man Who Turned and Fled--Brumley's Precious Legs--The Wait in the Wood--The Cunning of the Hunted--Bad Days in the Swamps--Within Four Miles of Freedom--The Kaiser's Birthday--Another Trip to Holland.

Simmons and Brumley, together with my companion of the first escape, had determined to make a break for it with me. And although we were not quite ready at this time the addition to the guards forced our decision. We had a scanty supply of biscuits saved up and I had wheedled a file from a friendly Russian; Simmons got a bit of a map from a Frenchman; and we secured a watch from a Belgian. With this international outfit we were ready, except that we lacked a sufficient store of food. However, there was no help for that.

The laager was a twelve-foot-high barbed wire enclosure, eighty feet wide by three hundred long, with the hut occupying the greater part of the central s.p.a.ce. There was sufficient room below the bottom wire to permit the trained camp dogs to get in and out at us.

They patrolled the four-foot lane that enclosed the laager and wandered up and down it, their tongues out, always on the alert. They were as well confined as we were, since the outer wall of wire was built down close to the ground. They were very savage and seemed instinctively to regard us as enemies; as all good German dogs should.

The sworn evidence of prisoners exchanged since my escape mentions that in one case an imbecile Belgian was daily led out to the fields, wrapped up in several layers of clothes and then set upon by the dogs under the guidance of their guards; this was for the better instruction of the dogs.

At each corner of the laager there hung an arc light. The sphere of light from those at the end did not quite meet and so left a small shadow in the center of the end fence.

As soon as night came we arranged that six other men should walk to and fro from the end of the hut to the shadow at the wire, as though for exercise. Others, ourselves included, cl.u.s.tered round the end of the hut. I watched my chance, and when the moment seemed favorable, fell into step beside the promenaders.

We swung boldly out, intent apparently, on nothing. Our arrival at the inner wire synchronized with that of one of the guards beyond the outer wire. We turned about without appearing to have seen him. Still walking briskly, we reached the hut and turned again. The guard's back was now turned; he was walking away. At his present rate of travel he should be twenty yards off when we next reached the wire. We dared not chance suspicion by slackening our gait. My heart stopped.

As we reached the shadow I fell p.r.o.ne and lay motionless. No dogs were in sight. Niagara pounded in at my ears but no hostile sound indicated that I had been observed. I dragged myself carefully through and under the clearance left for the dogs, until my cap brushed the lower wires of the main and outer fence. My feet still projected beyond the inner wire into the main enclosure so that on their next trip one of my comrades inadvertently touched my foot, startling me.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RECORD OF SECOND ESCAPE AND RECAPTURE.]

I held the strand in my left hand and fell to filing with my right so that at the snap there should be no noisy rebound of the spring-like wire. A post was at my right, and, the wire having been nailed to it, I was safe from this danger on that side.

The sound of the tramp of those faithful feet receded but the sound of them came strongly back to me like a message of hope.

By the time they were back once more I had cut through three strands and was crawling cautiously toward my objective, a pile of peat two hundred yards distant, which seemed to offer cover as a breathing spot and starting point. On the signal from the promenaders that I was through the wire, Simmons followed, and after him, Brumley. The other man lived up to the example he had previously set himself. He drew back in alarm and refused to make the attempt.

With twenty-five guards all about and some only thirty feet away, the very impudence of the plan offered our only hope of success. I still lacked fifty yards of the peat heap when I heard three shots, next the dogs, and then the general outcry which followed the detection of Brumley.

I rose to my feet and ran. We had already mapped out our course in advance by daylight, for just such a contingency; so I struck boldly out. I was still in the swamp to my knees, and under those conditions even the short start we had might prove sufficient, since our pursuers would also bog down. The swamp was intersected by a series of small ditches and scattered bushes, which added to the difficulty of the pa.s.sage. I heard Brumley floundering and swearing behind and went back to pull him out of a bottomless ditch. Simmons joined us while I was still struggling with him. In another hour Brumley's legs played out.

We could still make out the lights of the laager. It was vitally necessary to push on; so we encouraged him as best we could and managed, somehow, to reach the edge of the swamp by daylight. We put ourselves on the meagre rations our store allowed, one biscuit for breakfast and another for supper, with a bit of chocolate on the side.

We had apparently outdistanced the pursuit. We prayed that our friends might not be too severely punished for their part in our escape.

We lay in the heather all day, soaked to the skin with the brackish water of the swamp, the odor of which still hung to our clothes. It was January and very cold and sleep was impossible under such conditions. We nibbled our tiny rations and struck out as soon as darkness came. Our plan was to go straight across country, but Brumley could not navigate the rough going of the fields; although on the level roads he made out fairly well. So we chanced it on the latter.

Brumley was struggling along manfully but his legs caused him great suffering. At about two o'clock in the morning we lay to in the shadow of a clump of trees at the roadside, thinking to ease him a bit. He flung himself down. Simmons ma.s.saged Brumley's legs whilst I watched.

We had just said: "Come on," and they were rising to their feet, when another figure stepped off the road and in amongst our trees. It was so dark where we stood that he probably would not have seen us had not Brumley at that very moment been rising to his feet. He appeared as much surprised as we were and started back as though in amazement. And then without more ado, he turned and fled the way we had come whilst we made what haste we could in the opposite direction, all equally alarmed.

Who he was or what he wanted, we could only surmise. If he was not also an escaped prisoner then he must have been badly wanted by the authorities to have been travelling in such a fashion at such an hour; and above all, to have been so alarmed by this chance meeting with fugitives. In any event we wished him luck and promptly forgot all about him.

Later on in the night our road led us directly into a village. We hesitated as to what we should do. Brumley was for pushing through.

The alternative was to go round and through the fields, lose valuable time and play out Brumley's precious legs. It was past midnight, so we decided on the village route, and started on.

We pa.s.sed through without being molested, but just as we were leaving the other side some civilians saw us and shouted "Halt!" and other words meaning "to shoot." We paid no attention. Espying a wood in the distance, we struck out for it. Brumley was in misery and threw up the sponge. We stopped to argue with him, at the same time dragging him along, and while doing so saw two more civilians rushing up and shouting as they came. Lights began to spring up all over the village.

Brumley stopped dead and refused to go farther. We had previously agreed that if anything should happen to any one of us the others were to push on, every man for himself. No good could be gained by fighting when we were so hopelessly outnumbered, so Simmons and I rushed into the wood, swung around and out again and lay down on the edge of it, in time to see them take Brumley and come sweeping by us in hot pursuit. The main body stopped only a moment to inspect their capture, gathering around poor Brumley so that we could not at first see what had happened to him. Then several of them started back toward the village, with him limping along at their side. Ten yards away a knot of them gathered and a.s.sisted another up into a tree to watch for us.

One handed him a rifle and the pursuit went on into the wood.

Occasionally we heard the sentinel stirring.

We scarcely breathed. It seemed impossible that he could not hear the pounding of our hearts. We grew quite stiff in our cramped positions, but feared to shift a limb and waited for three-quarters of an hour before we dared to worm our way cautiously in the other direction. The snap of a twig was like that of a rifle on the stillness of the night.

Once we stopped, thinking that certainly he had heard us. It was only the beat of a night bird's wings. We dared take only an inch at a time, sliding forward on our bellies and then--waiting.

We met another sentry farther up, but worked around him in safety and with more of ease, as we were by this time on our feet.

Arriving at the end of the small wood, we walked boldly across the intervening fields to another one, large enough to afford cover for an army corps, and there felt comparatively safe.

We were, however, very wet and cold and altogether miserable, buoyed up only by the liberty ahead. As it was only two o'clock, we pushed on for several hours before stopping to lie by for the day.

For days we carried on thus without discovery. Each night was a repet.i.tion of the preceding one, an interminable fighting of our way through dark forests, into and out of sloppy ditches, over fields and through th.o.r.n.y hedges, dodging the lights of villages.

We went solely by the stars, which Simmons understood after a fashion, and, aided by our map, we held fairly well to our general direction.

We had no other sources of information than our own good sense. We watched the sky ahead at night for the glow which might indicate to us the size of the community ahead; and aided by a close observation of railroads, telegraph wires and the quality of the wagon roads and the quant.i.ty of travel on them, were able to form fairly accurate estimates of where we were and which places to avoid. Except on unfrequented byways we travelled by the fields, hugging the road from a distance. This made travel arduous but safer.

At that, we were sometimes spoken to in neighborly greeting. We grunted indifferently in reply, as an unsociable man might. When, as sometimes happened, people rose up in front of us from gateways or hidden roads, it was very disconcerting. On such occasions only the darkness saved us, for we took no chances, wherever there were lights.

It was really harder in the day time; when, try as we might, we could not count on avoiding for our hiding place the scene of some labourer's toil or perhaps the covert of some child's play. We slept by turns with one always on guard. It was difficult indeed for the guard not to neglect his duty, so utterly weary were we. The lying position we needs must retain all day long aided that tendency, and yet we were always so wet and cold that real sleep was difficult to secure.

In this district the swamps were numerous and difficult to cross. The small ditches and ca.n.a.ls that drained them or the almost equally swampy fields added to our grief. The feet slipped back at each muddy step: We fell into ditches: Dogs barked: And we almost wept.

Once a dog helped us by his barking. It was night and we were crossing a very bad swamp, an old peat bog which was full of the ditches and holes that the peat had been taken from. These were full of black water which merged so naturally into the prevailing darkness that we repeatedly fell into them. We floundered out of one only to fall into another, uncertain where we were going and lost to all sense of direction. There was no vestige of track or road. It was then that the dog barked. We stopped to listen, conversing in low tones.

Certainly, we thought, the dog must be near a house and that meant dry land and a footing. So we advanced in the direction of the sound, stopping to listen to each fresh outburst so as to make certain that we should not approach too closely. Apparently he had smelt us on the wind.

Before we reached the dog we felt the solid ground under foot and were off once more at a tangent from the sound of his barking.

The swamps were a great trouble to us, as were also some of the fields, so cut up by ditches and hedges were they, and yet, in order to avoid the roads and the wires, we frequently had to lay a circuitous route to avoid these obstacles or else chance the road, which we would not do. Often, when we could see our course lying straight ahead on the road, we put about and tacked off and away from it because a parallel course was impossible on account of the swampy nature of the ground. With these bad places pa.s.sed we could perhaps pull back to our true course again, but only after double the travel that should have been necessary.

However, we did not mind that so much. Nor did we greatly mind the short rations we were on. The other privations were too severe for us to notice these minor ones.

The worst was the continual state of wetness and the resultant coldness of our bodies. It was not so bad at night when we were walking and so kept our blood circulating, but by day it was very bad.