CHAPTER XIV[ToC]
Away Again
Why the Prisoners Walked—Cold Feet Again—The Man Who Turned and Fled—Brumley's Precious Legs—The Wait in the Wood—The Cunning of the Hunted—Bad Days in the Swamps—Within Four Miles of Freedom—The Kaiser's Birthday—Another Trip to Holland.
Simmons and Brumley, together with my companion of the first escape, had determined to make a break for it with me. And although we were not quite ready at this time the addition to the guards forced our decision. We had a scanty supply of biscuits saved up and I had wheedled a file from a friendly Russian; Simmons got a bit of a map from a Frenchman; and we secured a watch from a Belgian. With this international outfit we were ready, except that we lacked a sufficient store of food. However, there was no help for that.
The laager was a twelve-foot-high barbed wire enclosure, eighty feet wide by three hundred long, with the hut occupying the greater part of the central space. There was sufficient room below the bottom wire to permit the trained camp dogs to get in and out at us.
They patrolled the four-foot lane that enclosed the laager and wandered up and down it, their tongues out, always on the alert. They were as well confined as we were, since the outer wall of wire was built down close to the ground. They were very savage and seemed instinctively to regard us as enemies; as all good German dogs should.
The sworn evidence of prisoners exchanged since my escape mentions that in one case an imbecile Belgian was daily led out to the fields, wrapped up in several layers of clothes and then set upon by the dogs under the guidance of their guards; this was for the better instruction of the dogs.
At each corner of the laager there hung an arc light. The sphere of light from those at the end did not quite meet and so left a small shadow in the center of the end fence.
As soon as night came we arranged that six other men should walk to and fro from the end of the hut to the shadow at the wire, as though for exercise. Others, ourselves included, clustered round the end of the hut. I watched my chance, and when the moment seemed favorable, fell into step beside the promenaders.