VI.
Life in the Festung was becoming very hard. Snow had fallen heavily. For several days, owing to alternate frost and snow, the courtyard, whether a mass of slippery ice or of penetrating melting snow, was now a barrier to the garden, across which I dared not venture. The corridor was so intensely cold that it was no place for me to take exercise in. My only relief at this time from lying on a bed was to take a few turns up and down the room during the hour of the promenade, when all windows were wide open. Every inch of the picture as seen from those windows is familiar to me. Far away, beyond the low vine-covered hills, now deep in snow, the spruce woods stand out pitch-black on the all-white horizon. More distinct than usual in the snow were the quaintly-shaped roofs of ancient houses and the numerous steeples and church towers for which Würzburg is celebrated in guide-books. Traffic on the river had ceased, for the big, broad barges were ice-bound, and only in the centre of the stream the yellow water ran freely, hustling along great lumps of ice and melting snow. Over the bridge ran the electric tram lines that connect the town with the large suburbs on our side of the river, and the cold air—it was now freezing very hard—carried with distinctness the clanging, whining sound of the passing trams.
Wooden huts, surrounded with a high paling, lay right below, but the distance was just too great to enable us to see if they were inhabited by French or English prisoners. Away beyond the huts were large stone and brick barracks, from where on Sundays a band was wont to come forth and march close up to the fortress,—a real German band this, they played extremely badly.
During the time of the hard frost a field close by the barracks had been flooded and turned into a skating-rink, where all day long the skaters, black dots in the distance, circled round on the white board.
The steep avenue leading down from the fortress through the wooded slope was at this time an object of interest. A number of small boys were enjoying themselves tobogganing down the rough uneven surface, running races, upsetting and rolling down the slope head over heels in the snow, with cries of joy and laughter. Some forty feet below the window, along the parapet of the inner battlement, two sentries stamping out a path on the snow looked up from time to time with suspicion at the figure leaning out of the prison window. Night was falling. The two sentries were impatiently waiting to be relieved. At last the relieving party appeared, escorted by a corporal; with due ceremony the guard was changed and the new sentries began their dreary tramp with rifle slung over their shoulders, beating hands and stamping feet against the ever-increasing cold.
Large electric arc-lamps had recently been fixed outside the windows, so that a strong light was thrown on the parapet and wall below, and the sentry could see to shoot any one, utterly foolish, who should attempt to climb down from our window to the parapet—a place, even when safely reached, from which there was no possibility of further escape. Electric light is used most lavishly by the town of Würzburg, and the effect of the twinkling lights of the city, seen from the fortress, is very beautiful, but one must be in the right mood to appreciate such things.
"Shut the window, Jackson, and let's have a game of poker." This was the voice of "Bobjohn"—the best of friends. I have said too little of these friends of mine—both French and English—too little of their kindness, patience, and unselfishness with one who was often irritable and unreasonable.
"28th. Zeppelin. A great rush for the windows."—I did not realise before how tremendously big these Zeppelins are. It was a grand sight to see the grey-white ship, big as an Atlantic liner, sailing over the river, and to see it turn and come straight towards the castle on a level with our windows. When only some few hundred yards away, so near that we could see the features of the men in the passenger car, the ship turned again and circled round the fortress, and from the windows of the corridor we watched it disappearing into the sunlight over the distant hills.
This evening was marked by the arrival of a parcel of books, Tauchnitz edition, which we had been allowed to order. No doubt the publishers are glad of the chance to unload their stock of British authors, as, after the war is over, there will not be much demand for the Tauchnitz volumes.