In this and the next village we came to I would not risk taking any of the likely-looking by-roads, without some extra assurance, such as a sign-post would have given me, of finding the right turning. Sign-posts were conspicuous by their absence. During the whole night we found only two, neither of them any good for the purpose in hand, and they were the last we saw for the rest of the journey.
Consequently we continued on the first-class highway, which was easy to follow, until it joined the southern road again in the village of Werfte. This was about half-past one in the morning.
The high-road from now on continued due west through flat, monotonous, and swampy country. As fast as we could we pushed along, Kent making pace with his usual swinging gait, hour after hour. For our objective we had two small lakes, shown on the map as touching the road on its northern side. They were to supply us with water before we went into hiding. Close behind them, a single third-class road, impossible to mistake, was to start us north on the third evening on our quest for our proper latitude, and in avoidance of the northern end of the artillery ground, by this time not more than eight or nine miles in front of us.
The second sign-post we saw that night not long before dawn enabled us to fix our position with accuracy, but a little later we came to the conclusion that our maps had played us false again. The lakes were nowhere in sight, though we ought to have passed or reached them. Since we had left Werfte the track of the steam-tram had accompanied the road on our right, and a screen of bushes and woods had interfered with our view to the north. Now we burst through them, bent on finding a hiding-place away from the road.
“There’s the lake!” shouted Kent, pointing over the black expanse to where, like a shield of dull silver, the surface of the water glimmered three quarters of a mile to the north-northeast. It was too late to approach it then. To the north of us, a small thicket, looking as usual many times its actual size, invited us to rest. We advanced toward it over springy, heather-covered ground and across several wire fences.
On the banks of a deep ditch, scantily sheltered by bushes, young trees, some furze and heather, we made camp. It was a fairly safe place, for the reason that, as we saw later, there was no house within a third of a mile—at the moment we thought there was no dwelling within several miles—nor any tilled land.
Our resting-place on the bank of the ditch had been selected from the standpoint of concealment only. It was most uncomfortable to lie on. Before the sun had cleared the horizon, we were awake again.
The rain had ceased after midnight, and now a boisterous wind was dispersing the last clouds which hurried across the sky from the northeast, tinted rosily on their under side. The air was extraordinarily clear. Its refreshing coolness quickly drove the last cloying remnants of sleep from our brains. The sun rose. Far away, to the east, the church spire of Werfte stood sharply defined above the smudge of green which indicated the village.
I crept away from my friends during the morning to glean some information, if possible, by a look from the other side of the thicket, toward the west. The pale blue of the sky above, speckled by hurrying clouds, the flat rim of the sky-line, broken by two distant villages, the line of the road by which we had come, continuing toward the large village of Soegel, and a solitary farm, seven hundred yards away, made up the landscape. While I lay watching behind a furze bush a country cart crept across my circle of vision. Between me and the invisible road a number of cattle sounded unmelodius bells with every hasty movement of their heads.