Where was my companion? A fourth shot and a heavy fall some distance behind me. “My God! they’ve got him!” Should I stop? No! it is each for himself now—that was understood. Then another shot rang through the night, somewhere a long way behind. The sentry was finishing my friend. Horrible! Still on I flew, to suddenly fall head over heels into a ditch. I was too done up to go any farther, and lay gasping for breath; but the spirit of self-preservation is a hard one to break, and before long I was calculating what I must do next. The light of dawn would soon be upon me. I must get to a better hiding-place for the coming day.
What’s that moving towards me? Is it my fancy? No. By gad! it’s a man, and he’s moving so slowly it must be the sentry; he is looking for me. He will walk almost on top of me. All right, my friend; if you miss me by a foot, I’ll strangle you from behind. The figure came on, was beside me; in a flash I was on his back and had laid him out. A familiar groan. Good heavens! it was my companion. I almost cried over him, but his temper had gone with the blow I had given him, and it was some time before he would have anything to do with me.
“I followed you as best I could,” he gasped, “and I thought I had lost you, and I haven’t the faintest idea where I am. That brute turned on to me after he had given you the first three. The first one hit me just under the heel and laid me flat, but I got up and rushed in the direction I thought you had taken. Then he fired again, but it was miles behind me.”
When my friend had sufficiently recovered his breath we started off again, and after a few hundred yards entered a region of decayed woods. Here we experienced great difficulty in advancing, owing to our exhausted condition, caused by the lack of food and the extreme cold. Continually we tripped over the stumps of trees in our path, to go sprawling full length over the other side, only to pick ourselves up in a dazed determination to press forward as long as any strength remained in us. Time after time we crashed to the ground in our blind progress, until finally the two of us fell over at the same spot, where we eventually decided to rest till the coming of dawn, which was just about to break.
Whilst we were resting it was gradually borne in upon us that we were not alone in the wood, as we could hear something rustling up to us through the undergrowth. As yet it was some distance away. Instinctively we got to our feet and stumbled on again, a little refreshed by our short rest. Once or twice we stopped in order to find out if we were being pursued, and discovered that every time we halted the person behind did the same. Evidently he must be trying to get our position by the noise we were making as we passed through the undergrowth, the fact of which he seemed to have taken full advantage, for it appeared to us that he was very much nearer than when we had first heard him.
Somehow we managed to move forward at a faster pace than we had done hitherto, and in doing so we passed through a small clearing, in which we noticed some bundles of cut faggots, and the idea struck me that they might possibly help us to evade our pursuer. Hurriedly seizing one or two of these faggots, we plunged into the undergrowth on the far side of the clearing; then stopped to get the direction of the man behind, who in his turn stood still, as soon as he discovered we were not moving. I then swung one of the heaviest faggots to our left, right over the top of the bushes. Immediately it landed the man started off in the direction of the noise it had made as it fell through. In the meantime we remained silently crouching in the bushes. Eventually we heard the man, or whatever it was, pass us to the left in the direction where I had thrown the faggot, and we heard no more of him.
It was broad daylight before we moved on again, and found that we had been resting within a few yards of the edge of the wood. In front of us there was an expanse of plough, but quite different to what we had previously seen. Here the fields were neatly trimmed; hedges divided one field from another; also the furrows were more regular, and not so far apart. My companion and I discussed the fact, and decided that it did not look at all like the work of the Boche, which led us to believe that we were really over at last. So we were, and had been for a couple of miles past, though of course we had no means of knowing it. We heard afterwards that the man in the wood to whom we had given the slip was a Dutch sentry. Oh! if we had only known it, we should most certainly have hugged him round the neck, and probably asked him for something to eat: not that we were in the least hungry; we had long ago passed that.
At the end of one of these ploughed fields we were brought to a halt by a broad ditch about thirty feet across, on the other side of which was a railway line. How on earth were we to get over this? Personally I sat down in despair, wondering in a dazed sort of way who put the beastly ditch there. My friend scouted to right and left for a bridge, but found nothing. On returning to me, he noticed that I was sitting on a long pole.
“Buck up, old man! that’s the very thing we want,” he said. “We can pole-jump it.” And so we did.
On the far side of the railway track we reached a small village, situated on a big main road. Crossing the road, we saw a line of trees running north and south as far as eye could see—beyond the trees a long white line, of what appeared to be mist. As we approached we discovered it to be a river. When we reached its margin, it was found to be about three hundred yards across.