The farmer protested volubly, but the officer was inexorable. The omnibus party returned with their prisoner, and Kenneth and Harry tramped back in the twilight to their village.
CHAPTER XII
DOGGED
There was great indignation among the men of No. 3 Company when Ginger's capture was reported. Latterly the German airmen had rarely appeared behind the British lines; their experiences had usually been unfortunate. "Like their cheek!" grumbled one of the men. "And to carry off Ginger, too, after a lucky shot had brought 'em down. That farmer chap must have been a spy, and I hope they'll give him what he deserves over yonder."
The loss of the most popular man in the battalion was a blow to the Rutlands. And to be a prisoner they counted the worst of luck. Death they were ready for; to be wounded was all in the day's work; there was not a man of them but preferred death or wounds to captivity, to be the mock and sport of a misguided populace, and the victim of brutal and barbarous guards.
"And we can't do nothing," growled a sergeant. "Lor bless you, when I think of the stories I read as a nipper in the boys' papers, daring rescues, hairbreadth escapes and all that--what a peck of rubbish I used to swallow! And believe it all too, mind you. It all looked so easy. There was the prison, and the jailer's pretty daughter, perhaps a file to cut away the bars, or a knife to dig a tunnel underground, or a note carried to a wonderful clever pal outside, or the prisoner dressing up in the gal's clothes: gummy, how excited I used to get. Them chaps that write the blood-curdlers don't know nothing about the real thing, that's certain."
Kenneth laughed.
"The real thing tops anything ever invented, after all," he said. "You've heard of how Latude escaped from the Bastille; and how Lord Nithsdale escaped from the Tower; and how an English prisoner--I forget his name--a hundred years ago made a most wonderful escape from the French fortress of St. Malo; and only the other day, a German prisoner in Dorchester had himself screwed into a box and nearly got away."
"Nearly ain't quite, though. But I never heard of those other Johnnies; you might tell us about them--if they're true, that is; I don't want no fairy tales."
And Kenneth beguiled an evening or two by relating all the historical escapes he could remember.