After about half an hour he succeeded in doing so, and the two collaborators in this severe physical exercise crawled back through the attic hole completely exhausted and dripping with sweat.
There still remained four men stuck in the tunnel, it was already getting light, and in an hour and a half—at 6 a.m.—a German N.C.O. was due to open the outside door and call the orderlies. It was essential, therefore, to get everyone back into the building before that time. If the alarm of the escape was not raised before 9 o’clock appel, the 29 fugitives now at large would have all the better opportunity of making cover some distance away from the camp before they lay up for their first day out.
An hour past a look-out from an upper window at the end of one of the corridors had reported that two figures had been seen in the dim half light of the dawn making off through the rye-field. It was guessed that these would probably be the last pair out before the accident had happened in the tunnel which had barred further passage. If this couple could gain the Duke of Brunswick’s hunting woods—some three miles distant—before the hue and cry was out, they could lie up snugly and safely, and their predecessors would be in all the better plight.
The work of extracting the remaining four went on slowly and laboriously, and by a quarter to six two more mudstained objects had been salved and had been sent back, cursing bitterly, to their rooms to get rid of their mud and cover their traces. It appeared that the tunnel had caved in about five-sixths of the way up—at the bottom of the slope up to the final exit. Stones loosened in the traffic had found their way to this—the lowest point in the whole tunnel, and were blocking further progress. A landslip on the most modest scale would be quite enough to block up the tiny hole.
There was now nothing left to do. The two officers still in the tunnel with the volunteers assisting them to get out would have to be left to take their chance. Everybody else went back to their rooms and to bed, hugging themselves in anticipation of the 9 o’clock appel, and the fireworks which would inevitably ensue when the Feldwebel of B house reported with a rueful countenance that according to his reckoning there “failed” (fehlen) no less than twenty-nine Herren.
This hope was, however, frustrated, and the bubble burst two hours too soon. The two last men in the tunnel were eventually retrieved, and emerged from the plank entrance with their rescuers to find the door at the orderlies’ entrance open. The under-officer had duly called the orderlies some twenty minutes previously and had gone away suspecting nothing. Their obvious course was to obey instructions and go back to their house by the same way as they had come. But for some reason they failed to do so and ran out very foolishly into the cookhouse in the enclosure, where they met Niemeyer out for an inopportune early morning stroll. Their salvage party meanwhile had gone back by the proper way.
In ten minutes the whole of the camp staff had appeared on the scene. The two officers, of course, refused to say anything or to explain their muddy condition. Even then Niemeyer failed to tumble to what had actually occurred. But a few minutes later an excited farmer appeared at the postern gate and led the whole party to where, amid the trampled rye in which a dozen different tracks were visible from the camp windows, a gaping hole brought recognition and late wisdom to Milwaukee Bill.
“So, ein Tunnel.”
Tunnel. The same dangerous word, common to either language, which had been whispered for so long by the one side, now ran like electricity through the ranks of the other.
The next question from Niemeyer’s point of view was, how many? The fat Feldwebel went off and counted an expectant house. He found everybody unusually wide awake and good humoured for that hour of the morning. The fat Feldwebel was himself thoroughly amused by the eventful happenings since his last appearance in the house, and he merely chortled good-humouredly as name after name elicited no response. He returned to the rye-field to report to Niemeyer an absentee list of 26. In his excitement he had forgotten to count the “Munshi’s” room, from which all three occupants had flitted.