The scheduled thirty-five minutes would not come to an end. Even when my watch told me that they were past, the train still kept stopping at small stations and in the open country, and jogging on again after a short halt. My anxiety was great, but at last I had my reward when we arrived at Oldenburg.
What is it that makes one place feel “safe” and another menacing? In most cases it is difficult to explain. The comfortable assurance of security I had here, I put down to the absence of crowds in the station, and to the fact that a booking-office between the platforms permitted the purchase of new tickets without the necessity of passing through the gates with their hostile guard of soldiers. Eighteen months earlier the shutters in front of the windows of a similar intermediate office at Dortmund Station, had caused me to reflect that the authorities wanted to force all passengers to come under the scrutiny of the guard and the ever-present detectives. Now the face of the clerk on the other side of the glass appeared a good omen. We were not in Prussia, by the way, but in the Duchy of Oldenburg.
Our train was due to leave in twenty minutes from the time of our belated arrival. After a short wait on the platform it was shunted in. We all three bundled into the same compartment, but took seats in different corners. We did not carry through very carefully this show of not belonging together, as nobody joined us. Kent bought two small baskets of fruit from a vendor who passed along the train, and we were sufficiently hungry to start munching their contents at once.
During the first part of this last stretch of an hour and a half we remained alone. Dusk was rapidly changing into total darkness. Soon it became impossible to distinguish the names of the feebly lighted stations. I checked them carefully from the open time-table beside me, lest we should alight too soon or too late.
At 8:30 we arrived at Cloppenburg. The first and probably the most dangerous part of our venture lay behind us.
CHAPTER XXII
ORDER OF MARCH
My two companions had entrusted themselves to my leadership for the tramp to the frontier. My first business was to pilot them out of town from the right side, if possible, and, what was more difficult, by the most favorable road. I thought it, under the circumstances, about as hard a task as could be set me, at the very beginning. If so slight an undertaking as ours may be spoken of in military terms, I should compare it to a rearguard action and the successful withdrawal from touch with the enemy’s advance scouts.
It was a very dark night. Only occasional stars glimmered through the canopy of clouds. I knew nothing of the town, except what little information could be gleaned from a motor-map, scale 1 to 300,000. The time-table had taught us that we were to arrive at one station, and that a train was to start from another about half an hour later. A number of people were likely to change from the one to the other. To follow them, as if we were of the same mind, would give us a start off and carry us beyond the eyes of the railway officials. After that I should have to do the best I could, without the help of either a compass, which I could not consult, or the stars, which were not in evidence.