CHAPTER XXXIV
EXIT OBERFURST
Von Oberfurst awaited the dawn of day with considerable trepidation. For the present he was a free man, but his position was far from enviable. He was hunted, that he knew. Already a hue-and-cry had been raised and the desolate moors were being searched with the utmost diligence and precision.
Having broken out of the prison cell, he had gained the outskirts of the little village and had made his way in a north-easterly direction with the intention of falling-in with the escaped German officers. Soon he was lost in the mist that still hung heavily around the tors. He had neither map nor compass. Both had been taken from him when taken into custody. Without them he was like a ship without a rudder, and having implicitly relied upon them in his previous adventures, he realised his helplessness.
He was hungry and thirsty. The meagre fare provided at the police-station overnight was already forgotten. Food was not to be had, but for drink there were the many moorland rivulets that trickled down to join the waters of the silvery Dart and other rivers that drain the heights of Dartmoor.
At length he was forced to come to the conclusion that he must hide until nightfall—sixteen hours of mental and physical strain. To attempt to proceed in daylight was to court disaster.
Looking around, the spy discovered a number of irregularly shaped rocks partly hidden by bracken. Towards this spot he made, treading warily on stony ground so that his footsteps might not leave traces on the dew-sodden grass. Then carefully, without breaking so much as a solitary stem of bracken, he crept into his place of concealment.
He found himself in a narrow space enclosed by four masses of rock, and sheltered from the sun by the tall bracken. There were hundreds, thousands even, of similar clusters of rocks scattered about this part of the country, where a man provided with food and water could hide for days with little fear of discovery. From his place of concealment he could command an extensive stretch of moorland without showing his head above the skyline. So far as he could see—for the mists were now dispersing—there were no signs of human habitation.
He still retained his automatic pistol. Taken from him at the same time as were his other belongings, it had been carelessly left on the kitchen table in the constable's cottage, and Oberfurst had taken particular pains to repossess himself of the weapon ere he shook the dust of his cell from off his feet.