“My good man,” he said, “how could he keep it there? It would give the whole show away at once. What would you think, if you were a German officer, and found a big store of chocolate in one of the cupboards? What would you think of it?”
There was only one answer to that.
“That the ass didn’t like it, I suppose.”
But my remonstrance was useless, and soon I began to regard these noises and secrecies as part of the inevitable machinery of prison life.
§ 2
The first attempt savoured, it must be confessed, very strongly of the ludicrous. The protagonists were three colonels who had managed to provide themselves with German money and with suits of civilian clothes, made, so it was reported, out of dishcloths. They chose as their headquarters a room situated directly above the main gate. It was a drop of some forty feet to the ground, and a sentry box was stationed immediately underneath. The chances of getting away were in consequence very small, but there was, at any rate, no need for preliminary manœuvres among the meshes of wire netting. The gallant adventurers relied solely on the somnolence of the sentry. It was a cold, rainy night, and their experience of guards at depôts might well have led them to expect a certain lack of enterprise and enthusiasm on the part of their warder. Nor were they disappointed.
It began to rain heavily, and after a few deprecatory glances at the heavens, the sentry sat down in his box, and within a few moments appeared to be unconscious of the external world. From the window of Block I a rope made out of a blanket was immediately lowered, and the colonel began his precarious descent.
And then the rain stopped.
The sentry, roused apparently by the sudden cessation of sound, blinked, rubbed his eyes, and cast them heavenwards, and saw midway between earth and sky a figure swinging from a rope. Well, he must have been something of a philosopher, that sentry: he was in no way perturbed by the apparition. He rose languidly to his feet, blew his whistle to summon the guard, and waited patiently at the foot of the rope.
It must have been a very amusing spectacle. Very slowly and very gingerly, hand under hand the colonel descended, and when he was within reaching distance the sentry helped him very gently to the ground and escorted him to the guardroom. The other