“I wish you were coming, Harrison,” Jim said, unhappily.
“No such luck. Cheero, though: the war won’t last for ever. I’ll see you in Blighty.” They shook hands again, and Jim dived into the tunnel.
He knew every inch of it, and wriggled quickly along until the top of his head encountered the boots of the man in front of him, after which he went more slowly. There seemed a long delay at the end—long enough to make him break into a sweat of fear lest something should have gone wrong. Such thoughts come easily enough when you are lying full length in black darkness, in a hole just large enough to hold a man; in air so stifling that the laboured breath can scarcely come; with the dank earth just under mouth and nose, and overhead a roof that may fall in at any moment. The dragging minutes went by. Then, just as despair seized him, the boots ahead moved. He wriggled after them, finding himself praying desperately as he went. A rush of sweet air came to him, and then a hand, stretching down, caught his shoulder, and helped him out.
It was faintly moonlight. They stood in a thick plantation of runner beans, trained on rough trellis-work, in a garden beyond the barbed-wire fence of the camp. The tunnel had turned sharply upwards at the end; they had brought with them some boards and other materials for filling it up, and now they set to work furiously, after giving the signal with the string to Harrison; the three sharp tugs that meant “All Clear!” The boards held the earth they shovelled in with their hands; they stamped it flat, and then scattered loose earth on top, with leaves and rubbish, working with desperate energy—fearing each moment to hear the alarm raised within the barrack. Finally all but Desmond gained the beaten earth of the path, while he followed, trying to remove all trace of footprints on the soft earth. He joined them in a moment.
“If they don’t worry much about those beans for a few days they may not notice anything,” he said. “Come along.”
So often had they studied the way from behind the barbed-wire that they did not need even the dim moonlight. They hurried through the garden with stealthy strides, bending low behind a row of currant-bushes, and so over a low hedge and out into a field beyond. There they ran; desperately at first, and gradually slackening to a steady trot that carried them across country for a mile, and then out upon a highroad where there was no sign of life. At a cross-roads two miles further on they halted.
“We break up here,” Desmond said. “You can find your cache all right, you think, Baylis?”
“Oh, yes,” Baylis nodded. It had been thought too dangerous for so many to try to escape together, so two hiding-places of clothes and food had been arranged. Later they would break up again into couples.
“Then we’d better hurry. Good night, you fellows, and good luck. We’ll have the biggest dinner in Blighty together—when we all get there!”
“Good luck!”