As soon as the ranks broke after passing back into the inner camp enclosure, we made our way casually and separately to Barracks No. 8. The box we entered was quite deserted. Two of its inhabitants could be seen talking near one of the entrances to the barracks, from where they could hail any chance visitor who might intend to look them up in their quarters. We dressed as rapidly as possible, yet were somewhat later in getting ready than we had expected to be. Our baggage had been taken to the selected cubicle in the loft of Barracks No. 4 during the afternoon by men not specially interested in our venture.
The cubicle of our friends was in darkness. The open window opposite the wood-framed pasteboard door admitted a faint rose-gray after-glow from the western sky. The confined space seemed crowded with dimly seen forms who whispered that all was ready.
Somewhat perversely, I thought, Tynsdale suddenly demanded that I accompany him “to have a look at the gate.” It was a double gate, plentifully protected by barbed wire, which gave entrance to the enclosure of the Visitors’ Barracks during the weekly half-hour when visitors were allowed to see the prisoners. Without heeding my protest in the least he disappeared, and I had to follow after.
“I think we had better climb over the gate instead of dropping from the window,” was all he answered to my questions about his unexpected vagary. To my somewhat heated opposition against any alteration in our oft-and well-considered course of action he turned a deaf ear.
“I’m going to climb over here,” he announced truculently after a brief inspection, and almost immediately began to suit the action to his words. As little attention as he had paid to me, he paid less to some twenty or thirty men, mostly sailors, who were lounging near the spot. And then a very fine thing happened. As soon as these men saw what Tynsdale was up to, and without any perceptible hesitancy, they began walking carelessly about and around him, shielding his activities in this fashion more effectively than they could have done by any other means. As for myself, I hurried back to the loft.
“Come on,” I whispered breathlessly to Kent, “quick! Tynsdale is climbing over the gate. He’s stark, staring mad.” I grasped the rope, squeezed through the window, and was in such a hurry to get down that I let the rope slide through my fingers. Naturally a good deal of skin stuck to the rope. I landed with a bump and had just time to roll out of the way as Kent’s two hundred pounds came crashing after me. We got up, both with smarting palms, while overcoats seemed to be raining from the window above. We managed to catch the two grips as they fell. During all this time we could hear Tynsdale making a terrific din among the wires. As soon as he had negotiated the first two obstacles he started to overcome the third fence, while Kent and I carried our paraphernalia to the foot of it. Then Kent went over the top, and I heaved the things over to Tynsdale, who stood ready to receive them. Kent was a heavy man, and he appeared to me more than a little awkward at that moment. How he ever managed to get over the fence without bringing the whole guard about our ears I cannot yet understand. My own performance probably sounded as bad to them.
As I let go my last hold, a stage-whisper from the window about fifteen yards away, reached our ears, “Drop, you fools, drop!” The men in the loft could see the sentries over the top of the intervening low wooden barracks. To judge from the suppressed excitement in their voices one of the sentries must have been coming our way with much determination.
A patch of weeds on our left was the only cover near us. Grabbing the second portmanteau, which was still lying near the fence, I dived for it headlong and fell down beside Kent. Tynsdale, who had gone forward, beat a hasty retreat toward us and disappeared from view on Kent’s other side.
There we lay, out of breath, and dangerously near the lower end. I did not dare to raise my head even, and then after a long, long interval, the suppressed voices sounded again, straight from heaven: “All clear. Go ahead.”
We reached the end of the wooden fence. The enemy sentry was nowhere to be seen. A few quick, long steps carried us across the sunken path, into the potato-field and beyond the circle of the glaring electric lights. Kent was in the lead. Suddenly he dropped, and we followed his example just as the gate of the soldiers’ barracks, perhaps fifty yards on our left, clicked open. Then it slammed shut.