In short, his pose suggested that unanswerable question: “Why should Germany tremble?”
I quite enjoyed the fun and grinned and stared brazenly back at the Gadebuschers. My gendarme was apparently bent on giving them all a good look at me, for he marched me up one street and down another until we had pretty well covered the town.
We ended up at the town jail; a charming old structure, overlooking from the ground-floor, a pig-pen, and from the upper stories, the ramshackle roofs of sundry adjacent houses. The landlord thoughtfully relieved me of my burden of provisions as I entered and assigned me to a cell on the second floor.
CHAPTER XIII
My Entertainment at Gadebusch
I hope I make an unchallenged assertion when I say that it was my first visit inside a civilian jail. It was, at all events, an experience which I do not wish to repeat. At first I worried through a few hours examining the pictures and names carved on the walls. This exciting pastime exhausted, I divided the remaining time between singing and reading the old German Bible, which I found on the shelf, beginning with first chapter of Genesis. My singing, too, was restricted to a sotto voce the second day when a voice from outside the door shouted:
“Nicht singen! Nicht singen! Das geht nicht!” But I think this prohibition was due less to the rules and traditions of the institution than to the peculiar quality of my singing.
Three times a day the old warden came in with a hunk of my bread, a slice of my bacon, and a cup of German coffee. It was a concession, he explained. I should have gotten only the coffee, but he had a son who had formerly worked in England! It was lavish fare for this prison at any rate, for several times every day one of the other prisoners appeared at the little peep-hole in my door and begged:
“Brot, Brot, Kamarad! Just a little crumb of Brot!”
I was not a little curious to learn what manner of men my comrades in misery were. I was accordingly pleased the second night when I gained an opportunity of improving our acquaintance. I was slumbering peacefully on my downy couch when I felt myself being roughly shaken, and a voice:
“Engländer! Engländer!”