I felt much relieved when the train started. Another part of our venture had come to an end! We had now left the direct route toward Holland, the route by which the authorities would expect us to travel. Cloppenburg, which was the ultimate objective of our railway journey, lay in a straight line not so many miles to the west of us. Yet we were going to spend another seven and a half hours in getting there, and had to change the direction of our flight twice.
It was, therefore, with considerable composure that I sat listening to the chatter of the flappers and the occasional snores of the man, and watching the landscape through the window.
It stretched flat to the horizon, dancing in the heat haze. Toward four o’clock, white clouds made their appearance in the azure sky, followed presently by gray ones. When we drew into Bremen Station, where we had to wait forty minutes for another train, due to start at half-past five, a heavy shower was drumming on the glass roof.
Our traveling companions remained with us all the way. About half an hour before we reached our destination, the pretty lady next to me began to make ready for her arrival. Her hair, an abundance of it, required a lot of patting and pulling about, which did not alter its appearance in any way to the male eye. She sat forward in her seat, and with her back straight and her arms raised, she assumed the captivating pose of a woman putting the last deft touches to her toilet. Although anxious not to appear rude, I tried to lose none of her movements, which were the more charming to me as I had not seen a woman of her class close to me for over three years. Her rounded, well-modeled arms and shoulders showed dimly through the thin blouse. Fortunately, she was half turning her back toward me and my companion, and we could gaze our fill.
“Wasn’t she pretty!” were Tynsdale’s first words in the station restaurant after four hours of silence.
“Wasn’t she!”
We were having a cup of coffee, sociably sitting together at the same table. I went out to buy the three tickets and have a wash. To my astonishment, there was real soap for use, not merely to look at as a curiosity, in the station lavatory. I made a remark about this extraordinary fact to the attendant, who told me quite frankly that he made it a point to have real soap, and that it was profitable for him to buy it at eighteen marks per pound in bulk. This implied illicit trading, and the outspokenness of his statement was illustrative of the general evasion of the strict trading laws and price limits.
The journey to Oldenburg, our next stopping-place, took half an hour only, but was the most trying part of our escape. We were on the main line to an important naval and air-ship center, Wilhelmshaven, and although we did not approach it within fifty miles, the fact never left my mind. Furthermore, the compartment Tynsdale and I were in was so crowded that we had at first to stand. As soon as a seat became vacant, Tynsdale slipped into it. It was next the window on the other side of the car, happily away from an inquisitive and extremely talkative individual, who, having been rebuffed by an officer and earned the hostile glare of a man in naval uniform, lapsed for a short time only into comparative silence. Before he opened his sluice-gates again, I had sat down beside Tynsdale, covertly watching the dangerous lunatic, as I called him, and sending up heartfelt prayers that my friend would stick to reading the book which he held in his hand as usual. He would not do so, however, but kept looking out of the window, giving an opportunity every time, I felt, for our conversational friend to open fire.