Immediately we set out to find a road. There would be no more skulking through fields for us. We were free again, entitled to all the privileges of road and bridge.
We soon found a good wagon-road leading to a bridge over the canal. Across the bridge we boldly went, caring nothing for the houses at our right and left, whose windows were lighted and whose dogs may have been awake for all we cared. It seemed wonderful to be able to walk right in the middle of the road again! Ted said he wanted to sing, but I advised him to curb the desire. We were a little hazy as to the treatment accorded prisoners by a neutral country.
We still kept west, thinking of the bulge in the German boundary to the south of us. The road was smooth and hard, and we felt so good that we seemed to be able to go as fast as we liked. Fatigue and hunger were forgotten. A man on a bicycle rode past us and shouted a greeting to us, to which we replied with a good, honest English "Good-night," instead of the sullen grunt we had hitherto been using to hide our nationality.
Cows were plentiful that night, and we got apples, too, from the orchards near the road. The only thing that troubled us was that our road had turned southwest, and we were afraid that it might lead us into the little strip of Germany. However, we went on a short distance.
Then we came to a place where there were many canals, some of them very large, and the straggling houses seemed to indicate a town. Afterwards we knew it was the town called Nieuwstadskanaal.
We took a poor road, leading west, and followed it over a heather moor, which changed after a mile or two into a peat-bog with piles of peat recently cut. We kept on going, until about five o'clock in the morning we came to a house. It looked desolate and unoccupied, and when we got close to it we found that it had been badly damaged by fire. But it made a good shelter for us, and we went into what had been the living-room, and lay down and slept. The floor was even and dry; it was the best bed we had had for twenty nights, and, relieved as we were from the fear of detection, we slept for hours.
When we awakened, the sun was pouring in at the curtainless windows, and we were as hungry as bears. "Now for a potato-feed," Ted said, looking out of the window at a fine field of potatoes across the road. The field had been reclaimed from the peat-bog, and some of the potatoes had already been dug and put into pits.
In looking around for material to light a fire, I saw scraps of newspapers, which I examined closely and found they were Dutch papers, one bearing the name of "Odoorn" and the other "Nieuwstadskanaal." This supported us in our belief that we were in Holland.
We got potatoes from the field and roasted them in the fire which we built in the fireplace.