It was my kind old warden.
“Kom darunter—Blitzen!”[11]
I obeyed him, wondering, slipping on my trousers and going downstairs. I found my fellow prisoners to be two emaciated, but still professional looking gentlemen of the underworld. The hall clock was striking two. Having gone through the usual social amenities, I sought to learn what object our gaoler had, beyond a general get-together meeting of the inmates, in disturbing our repose at this unwonted hour.
“Ach,” explained one of them, who was hunchbacked, “That’s on account of the lightning!”
We listened a few minutes until we heard a rumble of thunder.
“Da!” he exclaimed, “you see it might strike the jail, and if we were all up in the cells we would die like rats!”
It struck me as a novel, but, I agreed, doubtless quite a wise precaution.
I learned further that we three were all the prisoners. The twenty-seven empty cells were a testimonial to the shattering effect of the war on “business.” My companions were serving a sentence of eight months for a robbery committed in the town.
“We don’t any of us belong to Mecklenburg,” observed the hunchback pleasantly. “You see, my mate’s an Austrian, I’m an East Prussian, and you’re an Engländer, so we’re sort of Kamaraden, aren’t we?”
“How jolly!” I thought.