The question of food was solved to our complete satisfaction within three days. Our friends knew, of course, that we were going for our exercise every afternoon at three o’clock. From the very beginning they were able to pass us sandwiches and small cans of food.
Not without a little difficulty the N.C.O. in charge of our corridor had been persuaded that “they are allowed to have their newspapers, of course.” His referring the question to higher authority had been discouraged. Why bother busy men with trifles? The newspaper man was one of us. He brought the papers round every morning, when the cell doors were opened for cleaning purposes, and also every afternoon. Frequently he did not exchange a word with us but simply pushed the papers into the blankets of our beds. After he had gone, sandwiches and a beer bottle full of hot tea seemed to have been hatched miraculously among our bed-clothes.
The last and crowning achievement was the ventilator dodge. The ventilator was a square hole in the wall above the door, inclined toward the cell. Just after our dinner time, when the N.C.O. on duty was likely to be otherwise employed, stealthy footsteps might have been heard passing rapidly along the balcony. Very frequently they were inaudible even to our strained ears. The scraping of tin against stone was a signal for us to hurl ourselves toward the door, to catch the Lyle’s syrup can, filled with hot meat and vegetables, or soup, which was sliding through the ventilator.
None of the N.C.O.’s knew about this. They marveled at our physical endurance, which permitted us to retain a flourishing appearance in the face of starvation. Sagely they counseled the taking of medicine, or soap for instance, to make us look weak and pale just before our “solitary” was to terminate. “It’ll never do to be seen with bulging cheeks and bursting seams by anybody in command.”
The chance of seeing old friends, if only for a few seconds every day, the knowledge that I should have their companionship again as soon as our punishment was over, and the fact that I was in familiar surroundings, lessened the depressing effect of my solitary confinement this second time. Wallace, too, kept in fairly good spirits. Nevertheless, I came to the conclusion that the game was not worth the candle. I told Wallace of my decision as soon as I could. When we were again in front of the gate I qualified it: “Never again, Wace, never again—except during the mild seasons, and when the chances are as good as I can make ’em.”
On Christmas Eve, the thirty-fourth day of our punishment, we were liberated, but we had to sleep in the criminal cells for some time afterward.
In time, however, Wallace got the single cell he coveted, and I, after three weeks, again joined my old friends in the big cell. For a fortnight dear old K. was the fourth man. Then he was sent to Ruhleben. Wallace was the fifth member of the mess, a sort of day-boarder.
A week after K. had left us, most of the Englishmen got into trouble. As a punitive measure we were ejected from the large common cells, and C., L., Wallace, and I were lodged as far apart as possible. C. and I were warned to be ready to go to a penitentiary. W. received “solitary” for an indefinite time. Another fortnight, and all our intimate friends were sent back to Ruhleben. Only those members of the English colony who preferred prison to the camp, and four escapers, who had made two attempts, remained in the Stadtvogtei—ten in all. But for Dr. Béland and one other prisoner, Wallace and I were almost confined to each other’s society.