I could find no water anywhere. The whole farm was a mystery which we never solved.
Returning to the pig-cart I was told by Fox that it would never do, as he had already got cramp after only ten minutes in it. He got out and we noticed then that it was threatening to become light.
Deciding to risk all we left the farm, making for the river in the hopes of avoiding the Germans. Our marvellous luck again came to the rescue. From the farm ran a narrow path which we had not noticed before. This we took, and after going only a short distance along it suddenly struck the bank of the river proper long before we expected to do anything of the kind.
This path was so small and unimportant that it must have been overlooked and considered too unimportant to require guarding, as we saw no Germans thereabouts.
It did not take us long, now that we were on the bank of the river, to get on to a point of land jutting out into it, and taking cover in the long grass and bushes there.
The Ems flowed sluggishly at this point, and appeared to be about a hundred yards across.
We had made up our minds to leave all the not absolutely essential articles of clothing, etc., behind us here, and tie the things we must take with us to the tops of our heads and then swim.
Knowing that anyone found moving about the frontier line is a suspicious character to German frontier guards, and therefore asked to show his papers, although he might be in civilian clothes, I left my long coat of cotton stuff behind, preferring to rely on my old khaki coat which I wore underneath to make me less visible.
Fox had made the suggestion of the tying our clothes to our heads scheme, and I thought he knew all about it, so had not asked anything more about it. Now, taking our boots and coats off, we tied them into bundles, and Fox got his safely on to the top of his head and took to the water at once.
He looked a weird sight, swimming slowly on his chest.