Presently we came to a road. Jeanjean rushed a little way towards us, then stopped short and muttered: "Attention, Lieutenant!" I looked and saw a German sentinel, leaning on his weapon, stationed at a little building some five yards away from us. There was no time to manœuvre; I turned to my men and, whilst running, shouted out to them "Es geht wohl! Kommen Sie hierdurch!"

We crossed the road under his very nose and rushed into a little wood which skirted the opposite side. The sentinel did not move, deceived probably, thanks to the dim light, to my words, and to the audacity of our manœuvre.

To our joy, at the other end of the wood, we saw a dark line stretching out towards us. It was the labyrinth of fir-trees, of tall broom and brushwood, which skirts the northern part of the country. We crossed a glade, and then a clearing and a railroad. The enemy post there had not time to stop us. There was another wood and then, at last, we were in the thicket. Behind us, we gradually heard less and less noise, and the firing was farther off and at longer intervals. Still running, we described a series of zigzags and curves, leaving behind us ditches, clearings, and glades.... Finally, in the midst of a patch of young fir-trees, I fell down. I could not have got up again though for anything. The others stretched themselves out near me and we all lay there, like so many dead men, in the wet grass.

The day broke, a fine rain fell persistently, wetting us through to the skin. We were shivering in every limb. Jeanjean coughed, snored, and talked in his sleep. The two Flemish men joked, swore, and insulted each other, each treating the other as a coward.... Gilissen, the little Liége "rossai," was the only one who kept silence. He was trying, conscientiously, to sleep with one eye and to take stock of our surroundings with the other one. I reminded him of that time when he had been on observation for the Barchon Fort and had remained for forty-eight hours perched up on his steeple, surrounded by Germans, and had come back to the Fort with all the material of the observation post.

Jeanjean, who certainly did not appear able to sleep well, now felt it his duty to compose the menu. "Anchovies," he said, "salmon trout, stuffed chicken, cream cakes," and I do not know what beside. I found half a turnip in my pocket, Gilissen had three sweetmeats, and the ground near us was strewn with acorns. We were all right, and could certainly sustain a regular siege!

I looked at my map, a Touring Club map, which was the only one I had. To my horror, I discovered that all the incidents of the night, and the various turns we had been obliged to make, had made us describe an immense semi-circle and that, at that moment, we were less than a mile from the frontier and surrounded on all sides by Germans.

In the wood, the firing began again. We heard it in the distance and then nearer to us. It was an organised search. Presently, this pursuit made us a little anxious, for the bullets broke some branches near us. We were obliged to leave our shelter and we went along under cover of a deep ditch. At the end of this we came out and found ourselves—ten yards away from a group of Prussians. We rushed into a thicket and the hunt began again.

Presently there was a fresh respite for us, as quite suddenly some quick firing was heard near by in a southerly direction. It sounded like an engagement and we wondered what it could be. Perhaps it was a Belgian troop, trying, like us, to get free. Extraordinary as this supposition was, it was the only one that seemed probable. In case we were right, it was our duty to endeavour to join it, at any cost, and work together. Perhaps our unexpected intervention, insignificant though it should be, might be sufficient to decide the issue of the fight. We moved on and had scarcely gone two hundred yards, when we saw a group of peasants coming out of a glade. They looked terrified. We questioned them and found out that the Boches were firing on the houses in the village, under the pretext that the inhabitants had hidden some Belgian soldiers. The brutes! Instinctively, I moved forwards, but the bullets whizzed by, quite close to our ears. This time, they came from every side. On the left, on the right, the Germans were everywhere, the whole place swarmed with them, like a veritable ant-heap. From thicket to thicket, from ditch to ditch, we struggled along in order to avoid being surrounded. But, alas, we were going backwards and behind us was the frontier! Finally, we reached it. There was the line and that open view beyond—a hundred yards away from us was Holland! It was the only side on which Death would not mow us down. Snysters swore like a demon. We took counsel together in whispers. There were three things open to us. First, we might give ourselves up to the Germans, but we had no idea of doing that. Secondly, we might let them kill us here, on the last little corner of our native land. This was tempting, but we could not rejoin our army if we decided on it. There was one other alternative, and that was to keep close to the frontier and continue our way, endeavouring to escape the German pursuit and the Dutch sentry. This seemed to us the wisest plan of the three. We soon cleared the hundred yards. There was an iron milestone at the corner of a wood. A few steps and then we were in Holland.

Prisoners

The enemy from henceforth was the sentry, whom we had to avoid in order to continue our way. We started along a sandy road in the midst of a thick fir-wood. We had not gone a hundred yards, when we found ourselves in front of a tall Dutch Sergeant, who made a sign for us to stop. I looked all round just as a hunted beast does. In the clearing, out of which the sub-officer had stepped, I saw a multitude of soldiers, with orange-coloured stripes, walking along a road, together with civilians.