Leaving the wood behind us—for we could find no place either in the trees or underneath them that a squirrel could hide in—we found ourselves in more or less open country. Only the lights of a few scattered cottages gleaming here and there showed that we were not out of the danger zone yet. A little way to our left we spotted another small wood or clearing that looked as if it might offer shelter of some kind. To this we advanced with as much caution as possible, only to find no undergrowth of any kind.
Things began to look desperate, voices were heard on all sides of us, and a man came tramping through the clearing in which we were. Throwing ourselves down, we waited with bated breath for him to pass. As soon as he had disappeared I’m afraid we lost our heads for a short space. Beneath our feet was a thick carpet of dead leaves. The ridiculous idea that we could hide ourselves beneath these struck us both simultaneously, and with one accord we fell on our knees and began frantically scratching up the leaves in wild despair, until we got down to the rotten mossy bed beneath, and after a few minutes succeeded, with broken and bleeding nails, in scratching a hole large enough to hold our bodies; but to pull the leaves over us from the inside, so that they would look undisturbed, we found to be an impossible task.
For a moment or so I lay back in the little grave I had dug and gave myself up to despair, and then suddenly it dawned upon me that this was not the way to make a successful escape. We were in a very bad position, but we were not acting with the coolness necessary to bring about a successful issue to our project. Forthwith I jumped up, and the two of us moved out of the clearing and scouted through the open country, travelling in what we thought must be a westerly direction. Very soon we espied another small clearing, this time to our right. Immediately we made our way to it with the utmost caution, only to find that here also there was no place of concealment. But on leaving this clearing on the farther side we came across a deep drain about two feet broad and four feet deep, with four inches of water in the bottom. Following this drain down its length to right and left, we found it was just the place in which to lie concealed, if only we could find some sort of covering for the top that would look anything like natural.
Unfortunately it was now practically light, and there was great danger that we might be seen whilst trying to construct a roof. Without some sort of covering we would almost certainly be discovered by the first passer-by. With this in view the two of us hastily snapped off a few small branches from the neighbouring clearing, and stuck them into the sides of the top of the drain, so as to form a rough frame-work; then tearing up some ferns of old-man’s-hair which we found growing along the edge of the wood, we arranged them as quickly as we could on the top of the frame of branches, and removing our boots we wriggled in one by one, drawing them after us. This was all right for the first one, but extremely difficult for the second, owing to the want of space in our retreat, since there was no room for each of us to lie on our backs. We had therefore to wedge ourselves in, lying like a pair of spoons on our side, pressed so close together that the slightest movement became impossible.
Our first sensations were of intense satisfaction at having at last found a place where we stood a reasonable chance of not being discovered, and great bodily relief after our long trek of the night before. Before long we felt the strain of supporting our heads above the water, in which we were partly immersed, but were able at length to alleviate this with the aid of our boots, which we contemplated using as pillows, though this was more easily thought of than done, as, owing to our wedged position, neither of us could put a hand out to reach the boots and draw them under our heads, although they were not more than six inches away, so that this had to be brought about by one of us rolling over on top of the other before he could get a hand free. This being accomplished, he rolled back into his old position, with the added comfort of the boots as a pillow.
For a time we composed ourselves to rest with a sigh of content, only too glad to feel that we were at least out of the danger of immediate discovery; but before very long we began to realise that we had a very bad time in front of us. Fortunately it was not given to us to know how bad that day’s experience would be—one that we should ever afterwards remember as the most terrible of our lives. No description of the awful time we spent in that drain, however vivid, could possibly depict the agonies of body through which we went. Owing to the cold and damp, we were first assailed in turn by an ague which nothing could suppress, our teeth rattling like castanets. This changed to the most severe cramp of the stomach and legs, which, owing to our position and not being able to move, it was impossible to alleviate. The cramp lasted till nearly midday, when quite suddenly it passed away, to be succeeded by a complete deadening of the limbs from the feet upwards—in fact, from the waist downwards we were as if made of stone, without any sign of feeling or life whatsoever. This was really a great mercy, as it relieved our previous suffering—anything was better than that awful cramp.
But now the likely possibility flashed across our minds that, when nightfall came, we might not be able to continue our journey, if indeed we should be able to walk at all; and even if we got the circulation back into our legs and stuck it out during the following night, but did not succeed in crossing the frontier, should we be able to last another day and night without food, and could we possibly stand another day like this? Of course we should go on till we collapsed, but for that matter we might have done that already. We could only wait for nightfall to put it to the test.
Soon after the cramp had left us a party of children passed, so close indeed that it seemed as if they must be walking almost on top of us. We feared they might be poking along the drain in search of minnows or something. The danger passed, but for some little time we could hear children’s voices, which kept us in a perpetual fear that some game or other might lead them accidentally to stumble upon us. From this time on pedestrians passed close by, either singly or in pairs at varying intervals, which brought us to the conclusion that we had chosen a spot near to some footpath or other across the fields, as we afterwards discovered to be the case. Just about this period it began to rain pretty hard, for which we were very thankful, although it made us more uncomfortable than ever, as we calculated it would reduce the number of pedestrians who would be likely to take a footpath across the fields.
Until the time when the first lot of children had passed, playing by the way as they went, we had felt pretty secure in our retreat, which was our chief consolation for being in such an awfully cramped place; but now that the danger of detection was becoming more frequent, owing to our close proximity to a path of some sort, we began to suffer mentally as well as physically. It was not long before we discovered that, if the rain reduced the number of people likely to be abroad in the fields, it was also very considerably diminishing our head-covering, which, if the rain did not soon cease, would be reduced to a minimum, on account of its being chiefly composed of old-man’s-hair fern, which, as most people know, is a kind of grey fibre, very much like horsehair. These hairs, when dry, had formed a beautiful thick and fluffy covering, but now that they were soaked with rain they had become shrivelled and hung down in lank tresses. We could now see out perfectly clearly; but owing to the depth of the drain, and not being able to move, we could not observe anybody who passed, though we felt their eyes could not fail to spot us, which is, I know, very bad reasoning, since one can always see a passer-by from the window of a room without being seen in return.
But philosophic reasoning such as this requires a better mental and physical condition than was ours at that time. Consequently we suffered tortures every time any one passed by. In one case in particular our nerves were strained to breaking-point. A man came along the path, carelessly humming a tune to himself. Just as he was passing us he suddenly stopped, and so apparently did our hearts. For a moment or two he stood motionless. How long he actually remained, or why he did so, I cannot tell, but to us it seemed a thousand years. Finally he moved off and started humming again, though he took our peace of mind with him. We felt sure that he must have seen us, but had feared to take us on single-handed, and had now gone to summon help. For that every German kept his eyes and ears open in the hopes of detecting escaped prisoners we were well aware, as the reward offered by the German Government for such information as might lead to the capture of prisoners was very considerable, especially for the hated English. Rumour had it that any person lodging reliable information received the sum of two thousand marks.